New Security Breach at Los Alamos

The security problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory just keep piling up. Today, POGO issued a press release confirming another breach involving "unauthorized release of classified data via email" that occured last week. The Lab has officially designated the incident an Impact Measurement Index-1 (IMI-1), the highest threat level, despite an attempt to downgrade it to a lower level.

Despite recent congressional investigations, Dept. of Energy chastisement, and promises of improving, the Lab's frequency of security failures appears to be actually increasing over previous years - this latest one being the fourth so far this year. The vast majority of these failures have been in the area of cybersecurity, including today's revelation.

POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian stated in testimony earlier this year before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), designed to improve security, shares a large part of the blame (pdf) for recent problems at Los Alamos. Not only has the NNSA often failed to take action, but it went so far as to transfer its oversight responsibilities to the Lab's contractor.

This latest failure further highlights the serious need for "independent federal oversight from the Dept. of Energy" and a stronger commitment to cybersecurity on the part of the Lab.

-- John Pruett

Comments

[Posted on: Aug 16, 2007 at 10:56 PM]

There have been documented problems at Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington State also, though it does not appear anything was done about it. There is information on the following blog site, about this situation and what happened to the people who as a part of their jobs in DOE and DOD tried to report it and get it rectified. The outcome was very ugly, particularly for the DOE employees. (http://whistleblowersupporter.typepad.com)