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.)

Comments

Nuclear terrorism is inevitable no matter what

[Wonderkid]

As per my short story of the mid 1990s describes and more recent events of 9/11 have proven, by combining: Will to succeed, political sympathy and connections, limited but enough funding, red herring based secrecy, a strategy with 'plan b & c' built in, slip ups by the authorities - and most importantly, the element of surprise - just about anyone intelligent enough can pull off a major attack - nuclear too.

Through the process of invention, discovery and the occasional foreign policy snafu, mankind has gotten itself into a position where it is now trying everything it can to avoid the inevitable, except for the obvious.

Whoops, apocalypse?