 Check every suspicious person! |
The Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory is missing 69 computers, including at least a dozen that were stolen last year, a lab spokesman said.
No classified information has been lost, spokesman Kevin Roark said.
The lab was initiating a monthlong inventory to account for every computer, Roark said. The computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information, he said.
Also missing are three computers that were taken from a scientist’s home in Santa Fe on Jan. 16, and a BlackBerry belonging to another employee was lost “in a sensitive foreign country,” according to the memo and an e-mail from a senior lab manager…
The security administration memo said the “magnitude of exposure and risk to the laboratory is at best unclear as little data on these losses has been collected or pursued given their treatment as property management issues.”
Los Alamos spooks have decades of experience at eavesdropping on everyone from ordinary citizens to atomic scientists. They’re instantly attentive to political dissent. That surveillance mentality stops dead at simple inventory control.
Has anybody checked EBay or Craigslist? Maybe these people should install a GPS system or a least some sort of tracking.
They should go to Cloud Computing. That way if they lose a terminal they won’t lose the data. LOL
Having had worked in Natl.Laboratories I must correct public reflex to imagine them being Area-51 style compounds. In particular Los Alamos. It is more of a University Campus than anything else. Hence, the rate of theft should be compared with the typical University setting. To me the number seem low vs. the expectation. Also, one must understand that a good portion of this number is likely in machines that have been cannibalized for repairs (no, they don’t send them back to Dell to be fixed after the warranty is gone) and more importantly in machines semi-legally purchased for the staff with intention to be used at home while inventoried at the Lab. My estimate from their numbers: 20-30 actually stolen; 1-10 misplaced within the lab; 10-20 cannibalized; 10-20 at staff homes.
University Campus? Har. With a radioactive McDonalds down the street.
I have to agree with #5 Dusan. I would also estimate most of the machines were cannibalized for parts. 10,000 employees and 9,876 get a computer? There must be quite a few still in IT.
“The computers were a cybersecurity issue because they may contain personal information like names and addresses, but they did not contain any classified information, he said.”
Um, the public schools are required to terminate all hard drives before trashing because you just can’t be sure about privilaged information.
I thought this place had a heck of a lot better security than a college campass with nobody at all likely to be a thief even allowed in.
My bad.
I think these government run agencies (and labs) all have an unwritten policy, that goes like this. “You can steal whatever you want, and get get out without being noticed, as long as it doesn’t have any secrets in it. Or at least, none that we currently care about.”
How do they know these missing laptops had no national secrets stored on them? Because they were cleared, before they were allowed to go “missing”. Har!
Ha! I £5 goes to the person who can name that “sensetive country”…