"We're from the government, and ..."

[unixronin]

"... we're apparently incapable of even helping ourselves, except to the contents of your wallet."

According to a report released by the Inspector General of the Justice Department yesterday, over a 44 month period starting in 2002 the FBI reported 160 laptops and 160 weapons as lost or stolen.

"[...] one of the laptops stolen from the FBI's Quantico Laboratory Division contained "names, addresses, and telephone numbers of FBI personnel."  Others contained unknown information that could be classified.  Most of the missing laptops were lost, not stolen."

Comments

[arasirsul.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, this is actually an improvement over the 400+ laptops they lost in a notably shorter amount of time (and an improvement over firearms lost, as well, and while the laptop figure from the earlier study is the FBI plus a couple other small organizations, the firearms figures in both studies are FBI alone...)

Averaging the loss of three laptops and three firearms a month is not a good thing, but the sick thing is it's better than what they _were_ doing, so at least the trend is in the right direction...

-JDF

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It's an improvement, but it's still not good. And I find it disturbing that they don't even know if there was any classified information on the laptops. Isn't the whole point of classified information that you're supposed to carefully control where it goes and who has access to it?

[juuro.livejournal.com]

Well... I use classified information in my job. There are some classes of information that I sign for that I have this and that item in my possession, but then I can have a copy on a CD in my safe and another on the (encrypted) disk of the laptop. It is completely up to me to remember where I have copies of the items.

Then there are some classes of information that never leave the specific computers; only sanitized excerpts do. And guess how the sanitized excerpts are exported? I connect my classified laptop to the classified LAN and squirt the file over there. Only later, when (and if) I remember and feel like it, I record the existence of the exported file in the logbook.

[juuro.livejournal.com]

"Most of the missing laptops were lost, not stolen."

Hm. Our security division most certainly would consider any lost laptop stolen, unless it can be shown beyond any doubt that the item has indeed been e.g. dropped from an airplane or off a ocean-going ship.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Alaric, I'm specifically thinking of how things could get lost in the Big Blue House's playroom and at Starport (http://www.thestarport.com). :-)

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

I suspect that if someone released the entire FBI employee list with SSANs, employee numbers and photographs they'd take this a bit more seriously.

They are idiots. It's trivially easy to do all database access remotely now. Even better is 'dumb' laptops that are no more and no less than an X-Terminal. Programs could not even be loaded on one I looked at and it was wireless, granted this was the early 90s and it was a warehouse tool but now it's even cheaper and easier to do.

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all surprised. The government in general sucks at IT (Congressional purchasing rules pretty much guarantee that), and the FBI has had several widely-publicized IT project failures. Amongst which, I'm certain, is a way to easily track sensitive items.

After all, I remember one case I was involved in, and stories of several others, where the Army forgot where it left a tank...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

"Waitaminnit, lemmesee ... not in the garage, not in the driveway ... Hey, honey?"
"What is it, dear?"
"Honey, do you remember where I parked the tank?"

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

I haven't told you that one? The short story is that a National Guard recruiter signed an M60A1 out from Anniston Army Depot for recruiting purposes, and had it delivered to the armory where he worked. I don't know how long he had it there before he retired. In the meantime, Anniston Army Depot lost their copy of the hand receipt that recorded who they had issued it to - but since they had it on their books as issued out, nobody expected to see it when walking through the depot. So it sat at a Guard armory being played with by the Guardsmen (who were entering and exiting it through the escape hatch on the bottom, the other hatches were padlocked).

At a later point in time, the Guard recruiter who was the sponsor for our Explorer Post was trying to find some Army armor for a Boy Scout camporee, he already had the Marine Reserve set to park a self-propelled howitzer there, but he couldn't let the Marines show up the Army. So one of his buddies, a tanker, calls him back and says he knows where there's a tank, and to meet him at the armory in Guntersville with a set of boltcutters and a number of jerry cans of gas. The two of them apparently drove the thing the forty miles to Huntsville...

So my Explorer Post had a tank... And it's amazing how many teenagers you can fit in an M60A1 when it's completely empty (other than the breech block for the main gun).

Of course, like all good things, it came to an end. Somebody got jealous of this recruiter driving the tank around in the field next to the armory to influence recruits, and looked up the bumper numbers and called Anniston Army Depot to ask if they knew one of their tanks was in Huntsville. Much panic ensued, including orders to park the tank immediately, no matter where it was. They later relented when shown that the recruiter had, in fact, been trained on that class of armored vehicles, in Vietnam, and a few months later they managed to dig up a transporter and take it home.

But not before we had it at my high school for a static display/recruiting mission and I managed to get it registered as my personal vehicle for the senior parking lot...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Excellent! :)