People like to blast private enterprise and CEO's but you have to wonder how much tax payer money and government equipment seems to disappear from time to time. I think we have all heard about the stories of the government paying outrageous prices for Fema trailers as well as toilets. I just think we need a little more balance in our daily lives since it always seems to be out of balance. I also found it interesting that if computers are stolen out of a secure area, well, how is that possible and does that make anyone feel safer? Our government can't protect government equipment in secure areas? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090212/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/los_alamos_computers
I work for a Defense contractor and as a security precaution, the hard drives on ALL laptops are encrypted. That way, if they're lost or stolen, the data on the drive cannot be compromised. Not that this makes it any better because there's obviously a pretty big breach of security, but hopefully these devices have their hard drives encrypted and whoever stole them doesn't know the admin password. Still, it makes you wonder, if they could steal such a large number of laptops, what other secrets are leaving that facility.
Plus, not every computer in a secure lab contains classified data, especially the laptops, firewire drives, and flash drives, which are known high-theft items that often leave the lab in the course of business. Labs with the highest security have their classified data only on secure rack-mounted servers in a closed intranet system.
The article stated that no classified information was contained on the stolen laptops. It was probably 69 shells that were not being used and started walking.
