Global Security Newswire

A U.S. nuclear-weapon laboratory's security practices have again drawn attention in the wake of recent losses of computers and communication systems, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 29, 2008).

The Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, a nuclear complex watchdog group, this week released an internal e-mail from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico describing the theft of three computers from a scientist's home and the loss of a Blackberry "in a sensitive foreign country."

The losses came after Los Alamos sought to crack down on information security following a series of lapses in recent years, including a case in which a contract worker removed large amounts of classified documents from the laboratory (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2007).

The recent cases did not involve classified data, said laboratory spokesman Kevin Roark.

"There are no national security issues," he said, adding that the losses were reported immediately to laboratory officials and that off-site computers are not allowed to contain sensitive information, a wider group of material than just classified documents (Sue Major Holmes, Associated Press, Jan. 29).

POGO staffers, however, said the incidents demonstrated continuing security problems at the facility.

"Here we go again," said Senior Investigator Peter Stockton in a press release. "It appears that LANL still has not created a system strong enough to prevent the potential release of classified material" (Project on Government Oversight release, Jan. 29).