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Los Alamos Missing Disks Never Existed
Hal9000_sn3 writes "Turns out that the investigations carried out at Los Angeles National Laboratory over a matter of stolen research were flawed...because the missing disks never existed. Kind of hard to defend against having lost something you allegedly had access to, if the thing never existed." From the article: "Eventually, four were fired for security breaches, one chose to resign under the threat of termination and seven others received various formal reprimands."
the WMDs *NEVER* existed???
http://www.kdp.pp.se/chemical.html
I didn't read TFA but I remember when the story broke, there were some entries in a database that said they did exist. Apparently someone had generated a few bar-code stickers that were suppose to be put on disks, but they just ended up in someone's desk or in the trash...never made it onto actual disks. So, YES, somebody screwed up, but I don't know if it was the people who actually lost their jobs.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
I hate to sound like this, but what does this have to do with my rights online?
Is it "Your Rights Online" or "Your Rights.... Online"?
Either way, it doesn't justify this article being submitted here.
Interesting story though...
If you can't mod them join them.
Some of the ranting on here about "scapegoats" seems to ignore that some of the people were guilty of security violations (an obvious cause for dismissal), but the violations were only found after an investigation was triggered on misinformation. It doesn't make those people any less guilty of their security violations.
The last two lines of the article should have made that clear, but I suppose most of the loud mouths never got that far.
Wen Ho Lee's case was dropped by the Feds with very little comment before it went to trial. As I recall, he had become the scapegoat of the investigation and his name was easy enough to pronounce so Billy-O, Rush and the other talking heads could crucify him.
For more info, read his book.
This "security" problems are being orchestrated by the higher up Neocons so they have an excuse to drop the University of California as their administrator and so they can contract it out to one of the Military-Industrial companies, like Lockheed-Martin. (This has already happed with White Sands and a couple of other government defense labs.)
the one who "had to resign" was an extremely resepected scientst and a member of the national academy of science. He was essentially a vice president at the lab and the only member of the NAS who was at that level of management.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Having once been part of the DOE process to check for just these things (I was part of the process JUST AFTER they were discovered missing) it maters not.
anything found missing or in bad shape (paperwork, networks, people, items) will get worded in such a way as to make the lab's look good and the investigators look better, and woe to anyone who bucks the process.
The process used to add materials to a safe is screwed up there.
6 discks are earmarked to go to the safe, they are given a tag and are recorded but another mini lord of the labs gets 4 of the disks to added to his domain before they are put in the safe.
POOFTA- suddenly you have missing classified material!
Keep in mind that if it is marked with a classified heading (even new or never used in a secure area, or just on paper) it is now classified and needs to be tracked.
What happened here was a case of the lab telling the investigators they were wrong (a thing you NEVER do) so this was written up and added to the discovery that Lee was FTPing alot, well we have smoke, lets find a gun.
too often I have seen big problems covered by the "acceptable risk" blanket
or used as a club to bend labs/people to others wills weeks or years later.
This article is the result of trult execrable reporting. The missing disks were the least of the problems at the lab. The investigations began after an administration change and BEFORE the missing disks story. There was a theft ring operating out of the lab that even included one person charging a Ford Mustang on her office credit card.
For references, read the local newspapers
www.abqjournal.com and thealibi.com
>The problem was not that he backed things up and accidentally took the disk home with him.
Bzzzzzt, wrong. He did not take the disk home. Or the tapes for that matter.
>The problem was that he intentionally copied classified data to his unclassified computer to back it up.
Bzzzzzt, wrong again. He did not copy classified data. He copied unclassified data from a classified network to an unclassified one, then he made tapes of this unclassified data, then he stored those tapes in the highly secure lab he worked in.
Then the media got a hold of the story and led the average joe, like you, to be very misinformed about the case. There are many many other details about the case you probably think you know, but which are wrong.
Yea, but hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns, require skin graffs, and require 8 days hosipitalization is not too hot because there is another 30F until I get to boiling. It's a hazard to serve any drink above 140F. The coffee was at 185F, McDonald's knew it. At 185F the coffee is not consumable and the product (drinkable coffee) was defective. It's not like she was the first person to get burned, she was the 700th person McDonalds had known about with the same types of burns. All McDonalds had to do was lower thier coffee maker's temprature to be the same as the rest of the industry. She sued for to get help with her medical coverage, but the jury was so angry that McDonalds knew about the danger and let person after person get injured.
Director Nanos single-handedly dealt an enormous blow to the American and world science by shutting down the operations at Los Alamos for MONTHS - all for nothing more than dominance games. If the Cold War were still on, I would suspect him of being a Russian mole.
Let me state that the knowledge of the total absurdity of the lleged "security breach" in Los Alamos is nothing new. Larry Barker of KRQE News reported that the scandal was fake in August 2004. Read the August 11, 2004 artile from Santa Fe New Mexican.
To conclude, I am much saddened by the mindless regurgitation of the official lies in this thread.