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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."
Thus again it it is proven that in an investigation like this the most important step is to find scrapecoats, even when the investigation itself is groundless.
Think of it as paranoia in action.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This article doesn't go into too much detail, and doesn't clarify why the people were really fired.
For example, if they didn't properly sign out the data and disks that they were borrowing, then they would be responsible for a mistake like this even if they didn't lose anything.
There should never have been a question about who had the disks in a properly run lab.
The XXX never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!
"The WMD never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!"
"The disks never existed, but the draconion measures we took were justified!"
Just fill in the blanks...
four were fired for security breaches, one chose to resign under the threat of termination and seven others received various formal reprimands
All too often these matters are concluded by way of "well mistakes were made, lets just leave it at that and forget about it".
As a US taxpayer (which I'm not) I'd want an investigation into the basis for the allegations and who made them. If someone is wrongly accused then the accusators have to be held responsible for their errors.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Okay, this isn't the BIG missing disk story of the Clinton era, this is a set of missing disks from last year. Kerry was trying to make political hay out of this for the election year so the Bush Administration did what it usually does. Shoot first, ask questions later so Kerry couldn't accuse the Bush camp of being lax on security.
So now the article screams false alarm and everyone appears to be lamenting the loss of money to UC and the loss of careers.
Valid points to be sure but... What's the bigger mystery? That top secret disks disappear from a research facility? Or that non-existent top secret disks get reported as disappearing from a research facility?
(Or in other words, did Karl Rove falsely report missing disks to make the Bush team look tough on security? Or did UC students falsely report missing disks to make the Bush team look weak on security?)
If they ever get around to "the missing uranium actually never existed," then I think I shall disbelieve.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Or, for that matter, get children to read The Crucible by our dear departed Arthur Miller. I read this play at school and it simultaneously scared and angered me with its depiction of normal people committing monstrous acts when driven by the fear of demons within their community.
Miller's play was, of course, an allusion to the McCarthy era witch-hunts, which at one point blacklisted Miller himself. These events are not far-off history or fiction, but relatively recent fact. If we aren't on our guard, hysteria can easily overcome even the most rational amongst us. It is up to each individual to confront their own fears and prejudices, for no one else can perform that task for you.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
Oh, it could be a coverup. But inventory tracking in a secure environment would be a compelx system, a minor failure of which would look exactly like what we've seen.
The confusion, it turns out, was created by inventory bar codes produced for computer disks that have never been written, a department official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell, this mistake, if it was that, is the best thing that ever happened to the place - there were multiple, serious problems with security and safety on the site that were addressed as a result of the hunt.
"Although multiple investigations have confirmed that the 'missing' disks never existed, the major weaknesses in controlling classified material revealed by this incident are absolutely unacceptable, and the University of California must be held accountable for them," Brooks said in a statement.
"Of even greater concern are significant safety weaknesses which came to light at approximately the same time," he added.
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I think that this is actually the best that could have happened. First, the disks weren't stolen because they never existed. This means the disks weren't stolen. Disks not being stolen is a good thing. Secondly, alleged flaws in the security of the labs were found and fixed -- hopefully preventing anything from really being stolen in the future. Flaws being fixed is a good thing. We're up two and down zero. Cigars for everyone.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82
I have to say that this sounds even worse than having lost two disks.
If the inventory of classified resources included completely imaginary items then how can it be trusted at all? If people assume that the inventory is wrong, then how will they know if something actually goes missing?
Sorry, but I agree with the government - if these guys managed classified data so poorly they deserve to be fired and fined.
Clear, Dark Skies
The Wen Ho Lee case turned out to be very similar - he was slightly sloppy with some data, as most scientists are, but he didn't do anything criminal. The moral of that story is that you can be sloppy with data, or you can be Chinese, but you can't be both at once.
There are a dozen scenarios that could involved non-existant, classified disks for which people should be fired.
-Person A creates a record of a disk, intending to classify a piece of media. Then doesn't. They forget to record the disk as destroyed.
-Person B repeatedly writes inspection reports stating that the non-existant disk in fact exists. This indicates that they are not actually doing their job of inspecting.
-Person C repeatedly signs off on the inspection reports that Person B writes, thus affirming the existance of a non-existant disk.
Regardless of the fact that the disk never existed, all three people should be fired. First, they were not doing their jobs. Second, and more importantly, they facilitate the work of people like Aldrich Ames. By not immediately reporting the disk missing (or non-existant) any could have stolen the disk, sold its contents and come back for more without anyone noticing.
On the other hand, do you really think the people punished got the exact same punishment they would have, if their errors had been uncovered under different circumstances? I mean, the management had already sworn that heads would roll. It would be nice to think there's a sound, rational basis for quantifying security breaches, and even-handed application of fairly written penal code... but in reality, I think circumstances and politics will weigh in heavily. Heaven forbid you should be caught with your hand in the cookie jar when dad comes home drunk.
No, it proves that security investigations that turn up security holes are very important, even when no damage has yet been done. Those people were fired because of actual unacceptable risks they created, discovered in the course of the investigation. If you want to talk about scapegoating, talk about the administration which jumped at the allegations, but never revealed that the actual damage was never done, because it would have been harder to spin that. Even though it would have reduced the fear among Americans that our nuclear programs are being compromised by active enemies. Who benefits from the increased fear?
--
make install -not war
The Wen Ho Lee case turned out to be very similar - he was slightly sloppy with some data
Yes and no. The problem was not that he backed things up and accidentally took the disk home with him. The problem was that he intentionally copied classified data to his unclassified computer to back it up. This cannot happen by accident. Anyone who works with such data should knows exactly what will happen if they do this -- prison. In Wen Ho Lee's case, the assumption was originally that he was selling secrets to the Chinese this way, but I think the final answer turned out to be he was just lacking common sense, and thus his long prison term punishment did not fit his crime of stupidity.
Disclaimer: I don't and can't speak for LANL. If you want the official word, call the Public Affairs Office and ask to speak to one of the mouthpieces there.
The primary reason Lee has the reputation as a wronged man is because Americans really, really liked "The X-Files". People _want_ to believe that the resources of the US government were brought to bear on an innocent man in an election year to promote or dissuade shadowy agendas hammered out by smoking men in darkened rooms. Even better that he was foreign-born of the inscrutable Chinese race, because now it means the shadowy government is racist, too, and didn't we always know THAT? OK, that's probably not the primary reason, but I do think it's a strong component. People pride themselves on "seeing through the lies". It means they're smarter than the evil government. It bolsters their self-esteem.
Another major component is that we are bound by the same rules Wen Ho was, only we actually do take them seriously. It's difficult to say much about what he did without violating classification rules. That puts Wen Ho and his defenders at an advantage in that they can say things like "Everyone at Los Alamos copies classified data onto unclassified media and takes it home"; we can't say "On this and this and this date, Wen Ho copied this and this and this computer file in violation of the Atomic Energy Act." We simply cannot talk about what he took and how he took it.
We have indeed seen many changes in policy and practice lab-wide since the summer of 2000. As fate would have it, this past summer's incident was a violation of procedures implemented in the Wen Ho fallout. Even more new rules and procedures have been piled on since the stand-down of operations. Some of those rules are subject to -- you got it -- classification and don't get talked about on the outside. Others are freely discussed. Suffice to say that after this summer, even getting one's hands on a piece of writeable media is a herculean challenge. Infrastructure is being upgraded and employee training has been augmented. We're better now than we were a year ago, and that was better than five years ago.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
>He copied unclassified data from a classified network
bzzzt wronger still...
There is no such thing as "unclassified data" on a "classified network" - all data on a classified network is considered classified as well even if only by association.
Theoretically you could download the html for cnn's main page over a classified network, and that downloaded copy of the html would then become classified too.
It sounds silly at first but if you think about it, it's just far more effective to dub everything classified than it would be to try to prove conclusively that any given snippet of data observed on a classified network does not in fact contain classified sub-snippets (think steganography, etc).