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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.)
It's all those iPods that the techies bring in.
Get your own free personal location tracker
the 7-11 of government agencies.
Terrorist: I'll take two hard drives with weapons research on them.
Sandia: That'll be $2000. Thank you and please come again.
Remind me again of what form of strong encryption they were using for said data? Oh wait a minute... Really great when people who are trusted with info this sensitive (I'm glad they seem to be _mostly_ certain that it did not contain weapons information) are not held to certain standard security practices.
What is it with computers that they are magnets for incompetent people? Before everything was stored electronically somehow I doubt people obtained sensitive info just because someone forgot to lock a vault door...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Technically anything that touches their Classified LAN is then considered classified to the highest level of the data on the system. Some tech could have brought in a new desktop background on floppy from the unclass side.
"Oh my GOD where is my Britney Spears pictures!!!."
The missing data was stored on Zip drive floppies.
In other words, the media itself will fail in about 6 months, and there wont be any Zip drives still working by then to read it.
While the loss of a floppy, might seem trivial to some, you might want to consider this fact. That single floppy could have contained the results of years of experimentation. Thus allowing anyone that obtained it, to forego that same xperimentation, and advance their studies further at the exspense of the United States Tax Payer. Just because a Secret is small, doesn't make it any less vital, or costly.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Nobody wants to become the next Wen Ho Lee. So when they make a small mistake, they probably are afraid to report it, even though failing to report will get them in even bigger trouble. This could explain why missing hard drives, instead of being turned in when found, mysteriously turned up behind a photocopier, a spot that had previously been checked.
Of course it's appropriate to be anal about security when dealing with this type of stuff. But it takes a special kind of person to function well in a culture of fear, and such people are very rare, even more rare when you also require that they have advanced scientific degrees. So LANL has to strike a delicate balance between instilling fear to enhance security, and dealing with the unwanted, paradoxically security-degrading consequences of that fear.
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. Not fun.
"...Perhaps the best question to ask in this situation is why these labs are still using removable data storage devices to store sensitive information."
I worked on projects that collected classified data and spec'd systems with removable storage. The reason we used removable storage was because it was easier to get DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Organization, yes, that really is the acronym courtesy of the Department of Defense Overly Contrived Acronym Certification Agency (DODOCACA)) to certify a system for classified use if we could show that all of the storage could be removed from the system and securely stored. Of course this relies upon having people who aren't going to lose the secure storage, which is another thing entirely. Given advances in storage since the 1990s when I was administering such systems I'd be surprised if any classified system wasn't built around removable storage systems. You can get a 320Gb firewire disk for $350. Of course you could also do your work on laptops and then lock them in your classified safe at the end of the day too.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
This would never happen in Canada. Not because of our state of the art security systems, but simply because we don't invest money in developing weapons, and we have no information that anyone wants. hehe... :P