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."

Comments

Well.. politics

[jokumuu]

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.

Re:Well.. politics

[luvirini]

Ofcourse, if there were no immediate terminations of people who were too bad at covering their asses, someone higher up in the chain might have to take the rap. Tuhus the higherup had to act fast to cover their asses or they might be in trouble, nevermind any innocents who loose.

State-sponsored paranoia

[Black Parrot]

Think of it as paranoia in action.

Did the fired workers make a mistake?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Did the fired workers make a mistake?

[unitron]

"I didn't admit that I had non-existing Weapons of Mass Destruction and because of that, some country invaded me."

And, of course, if you had admitted to not having those weapons all the enemies you made over the years, both in neighboring countries and within your own populace, not to mention anyone else in the neighborhood that wanted your country's petroleum for themselves, would have known that you were in a position of weakness and would have quickly moved in for the kill, so it's a simple case of "if you don't hurry up and commit suicide, we're gonna kill you".

Politics again...

[the_skywise]

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?)

Re:Politics again...

[miu]

...or maybe the Ninja forces of the Liberal Elite or the Bitch Droids of the Ann Coulter Army are impurifying your precious bodily fluids in such a way to make you make you believe that.

The same people who laugh off as "conspiracy nonsense" any whisper of secret manipulation by leaders they approve of will gleefully impute the most ludicrous and blackhearted motives to those that they do not. I believe this was a pretty simple SNAFU that was blown out of proportion and stamped down on a little hard to make a point, these kind of things happen often enough naturally that there is no reason to believe the incident was engineered by one side or the other.

Re:Responsibility

[tomstdenis]

There you go again spouting "responsibility" ...

That's been outlawed in the US.

"Caution: Coffee is hot"

"Caution: Don't drink like a fish"

"Caution: Burgers are not healthy"

"Caution: Fire is hot" ...

Or "Caution: Show has naughty language" ...

We don't watch our diets, we can't figure out that cooked things are hot and we can't raise our children.

Why should we not point random fingers at the work place?

Tom

Re:Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

[gihan_ripper]

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.

Re:Missing disks was only one problem...

[dont_think_twice]

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.

fear itself

[Doc Ruby]

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?