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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.
No, nevermind they never existed in the first place.
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.
I'm glad to hear that the disks were not missing and in fact apparently never existed, but that only clears up one mystery.
Were the missing notebooks that were reported, alleged Chinese hack-attacks, accusations against Wen Ho Lee and all the other reported security lapses phantoms as well?
I'm a big tall mofo.
A very funny Monty Python skit. Except the Spanish Inquisition wasn't funny and like any witch hunt you will find witches even when there are none to be found. The equivilent of the Spanish Inquisition swooped down on these people and heads were going to roll. It doesn't matter that there were no disks to go missing in the first place. It only matters that it's perceived that something is being done to correct the problem - even if that particular problem doesn't exist. There is bound to be some problem if we look hard enough. The vengeful, righteous persecutors who went and gleefully destroyed people can sleep happily in their beds because they are under the misguided belief that they found and burned their nonexistent witches with the full backing of god and country. It's a shame they don't make children watch The Oxbow Incident (old black and white movie about hanging cattle rustlers who were not guilty - a study in mob justice)
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
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?)
When I was a gov.contractor with a high level clearance, we had to go through all kinds of security steps in the handling of classified docs... One day I had thought my PHB had lost his mind..... I was wrong, it never exsisted to begin with. We did not have to report it though, because it did not have anything to do with "intelligence".
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
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
A few things about Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:
They're under the direction of the Department of Energy and are managed by the University of California.
Across the street from both one finds Sandia National Laboratories, managed by Martin-Marietta.
Election-year antics with these two labs have become rampant of late: usually, the republicans go for security lapses and the democrats for environmental issues. This is in spite of the fact that the laboratories have a negligable environmental impact (the measuring devices at LLNL to detect toxic releases in the air from the research facility had to be brilliantly engineered to filter out the noise from the freeway 1 mile away, noise which is 1000 times larger than the "damaging environmental releases" they're supposed to detect and help prevent), and have an excellent security record (the "security incidents" are in fact created by failures in the security bureaucracy. If, for example, you have a policy to destroy secret documents after 20 years, and someone slaps a secret-document tracking program on top, suddenly the news reports "tens of thousands of secrets lost").
In effect, these have beome largely political attacks on the Secretary of Energy, a cabinet-level appointment, and through that person, to the president and party in power.
So why the "lax security" during a Republican administration? Those two labs employ something on the order of 15,000 people. THey're managed by the University of California. The University of California has one of the most solvent pension funds in the country. Martin Marietta(or Lockheed Martin, I forget. same company) has long expressed an interest in stretching their management across the street from Sandia to LANL and LLNL; in addition to the money they can make directly from government spending, they'll be free to raid that sweet pension fund.
Of course, I'm just ranting. The Bush administration has set a steadfast policy of protecting the country's resources against corporate raiders.
I work at a research lab where most of the employees need clearances. I was curious about RFID tags that were superglued to the walls at various locations. I was told that they replace bar coded labels that used to be scanned by security guards for a record of monitoring on their rounds of the building. WHY? because the guards got the bright idea that a photocopied sheet with the bar codes for their assigned security tour could be scanned at the right intervals and they would never have to leave their desk or their coffee and doughnuts to walk the hallways.
...and yer damn right I am making this comment in cowardly anonymity.
I believe
Imagine investigating a story, reporting on an event before anyone else, even getting articles placed in other papers! It could be a dream job with people lining up to fund it. PLEASE consider what
Caveat, this coming from someone who just got a post rejected last week, but still there are a hundred geeks out there wanking on about two week old news and it's kinda dumb. Why not actually contact some congressional staffers and find out what's happening BEFORE the news breaks elsewhere? Like, news? You know?
This is the weak point of slashdot's dependence on user submissions. There aren't any journalist users who are going to submit first to slashdot. Solve for x.
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
I repeatedly submitted this story to /. back in July and even posted it in a comment:
1 6107
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=9827294&sid=1
Idiots.
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.