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LANL, Sandia Report Losing Classified Data
dread minerva writes "This week, Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories publicly reported that sensitive material stored on removable data storage devices was missing." In Sandia's case, "According to the Las Vegas Sun, this 'prompted the lab to halt all classified work Thursday while officials conduct a wall-to-wall inventory of sensitive data.' Sandia also reported that a 'computer floppy disk was missing.' However, according to the Albuquerque Journal, 'lab officials said they don't believe it contains any weapons information or any other information that could harm national security,' only admitting that the material on the disk was classified. Due to these latest events, LANL has shut down all work on classified projects as of Friday." (Read more below.) Update: 07/17 21:21 GMT by T : A correction -- research was shut down only at LANL (not, as I mistakenly claimed, at Sandia) -- and an update: Sandia's missing disk was recovered.
"These snafus have led the government to open up the labs to defense-contracting bids for the first time in their 60+ year history (until now the labs have been run by UC-Berkeley). As NPR reported on Friday, the researchers at the labs were upset by this move, as they are afraid of the labs losing their academic nature. Perhaps the best question to ask in this situation is why these labs are still using removable data storage devices to store sensitive information."
(Other institutions, including The University of Texas system, are also angling for a share of the lab's management.)
If it doesn't contain any data that can be used to endanger national security, WHY is it classified? Classification is a way for the government to get around its responsibilities for disclosure in the few cases where disclosure presents a real danger... we all know that the government has been abusing this ability for ages, but this is just blatantly wrong, no?
I've had this sig for three days.
not just classified but ALL work was stopped on friday. Note this does not mean vacation time. In fact al vacations are cancelled. It mean everyone stops production work and only performs activities related to safety and security enhancement, inventories and training. Really its a good thing and its happening because the head of Los Alamos is a former admiral who runs a tight ship and does not tolerate anything but teamwork.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It doesn't cost us more, it costs them less. That's the idea behind open research: I research something, tell you about it, you get an idea, research it, tell someone, they get an idea ...
Keeping research findings holed up is a good way to waste a lot of effort duplicating others' findings. No need to have every country individually figure things out.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The quickest and easiest way to keep your spying WMD researching evil enemies at bay is to ensure that from time to time they get weapons and research data that is entirely fake and will result in billions of dollars and many years of fruitless research and development on the part of your enemy.
To ensure that they believe that what they have is real, it is quite important to ocassionally make a big stink about the faked data that was lost. However, if you loose real data, it is better to keep it quiet and even produce lots of alternative data sets (a form of data denial of service attack) that pop up around the acquirer...
Don't you guys know anything about information warfare?
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Failure to report a loss is a very bad idea. I worked at an installation where the security officer routinely removed pages from classified documents, just to keep us on our toes. If you didn't detect and report the missing pages, you were in big trouble.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
When Wen Ho Lee backed up his work data, it was not even classified. It was designated "Protect As Restricted Data" (PARD), which is not a classified designation. The government retroactively classified it to prosecute him. Imagine working in that kind of environment.
First, PARD does not mean freely distributable. He was still legally obligated to protect the data.
Second, you claim he made a back up. But what you failed to mention is that that back up has never been found. Lee claims he tossed the tapes into the trash bin behind his office building. Those tapes have never been found, despite great effort and expense searching the landfill where that trash would have ended up.
You're right, despite the joke. That is exactly what you do with US government classified material -- stick a big, brightly colored label on it that screams "Top Secret".
The idea isn't to hide the disk on top of your desk,, "Purloined Letter" style. The idea is to make sure it's completely obvious to anyone that sees it that the disk is classified, must be handled as classified, and no "but I didn't know it was classified" excuses.
The bad guys are already going to know what they're after. It's usually an inside job. An innocuous label isn't going to help hide a secret, but a glaring one helps protect it.