LOS ALAMOS SCIENTISTS MAD AS HELL
Kevin Vixie is livid.
He’s one of a num­ber of sci­en­tists at Los Alamos National Laboratory who are angry with Congress, for launch­ing hear­ings this week into the alle­ga­tions of fraud and Swiss cheese secu­rity that have already forced the lab’s direc­tor to resign; with the Department of Energy, for impos­ing a series of increas­ingly baroque reg­u­la­tions on their actions; with the media, for con­tin­u­ing to harp on these charges; and with busi­ness lead­ers and for­mer senior man­agers, whose eth­i­cal lapses, they feel, are the root of the lab’s ongo­ing prob­lems.
“I want to be here. I love being here. But I’m out of here, no ques­tion, if they con­tinue to make it more dif­fi­cult to be a sci­en­tist,” said Vixie, a math­e­mati­cian in the lab’s top-​​secret X Division.
My Wired News story has more on on why these peo­ple are so irate.

LOS ALAMOS SECURITY: FT. HOOD DEFENDER WEIGHS IN
Former Military Police cap­tain Phil Carter served as the anti-​​terrorism/​force pro­tec­tion offi­cer for the 4th Infantry Division. In that job, he helped write the plan to defend Fort Hood, the world’s largest mil­i­tary base in the world. Here’s what he had to say about Los Alamos’ secu­rity:

We’re not talk­ing about the train­ing area at Fort Hood (or Camp Pendleton). Los Alamos is a national-​​level asset and it ought to be locked up as tight as a facil­ity befit­ting the kind of stuff it has. In more con­crete terms, Los Alamos should employ some sort of lay­ered secu­rity scheme sim­i­lar in con­cept to what the Secret Service does for the President. There should be at least three lay­ers of exter­nal secu­rity for a site like this:
– Outer layer: sen­sors and armed patrols con­duct­ing mounted and dis­mounted recon­nais­sance of the area
– Mid layer: perime­ter fence, access con­trol, guards walk­ing fence­line, mil­i­tary work­ing dogs
– Inner layer: access con­trol to the most sen­si­tive sites; 24-​​hour sur­veil­lance of those areas; sophis­ti­cated detec­tion sys­tems
If done right, a lay­ered sys­tem pro­vides some redun­dancy. It also cre­ates the abil­ity to respond to threats as they’re detected by the outer layer. (We infantry guys call this a ‘defense in depth’) In the­ory, an intruder like Mr. Shachtman would be detected by the sen­sors or patrols at the outer layer, and a team would be dis­patched to deter­mine whether he’s a threat or not.

GI JOE AS SUPERMAN
This isn’t quite Superman’s X-​​ray vision. But it’s close enough to bring gig­gles to any­one who’s ever read a comic book.
The U.S. Air Force and Army are co-​​funding a project that allows, in a lim­ited way, its troops to see through walls. It won’t tell sol­diers what color under­wear Lois Lane is wear­ing. But it’ll give a good idea of where she is in the next room.
There are a vari­ety of tech­no­log­i­cal approaches being tested in this pro­gram, called, imag­i­na­tively enough, “Through the Wall Surveillance.” The fur­thest along relies on a mod­i­fied radar send­ing out waves that pen­e­trate wood and con­crete, but bounce back when they meet flesh.
Check out my Tech Central Station story for more on this program.

FIRED WHISTLEBLOWER NOW LABS’ SECURITY CHIEF
Steven Doran, one of two for­mer police chiefs fired from Los Alamos National Laboratory after their inves­ti­ga­tions into fraud went too deep, will now over­see secu­rity for the entire University of California sys­tem, reports the Contra Costa Times.
The University of California oper­ates Los Alamos and two other labs on behalf of the Energy Department. Doran will super­vise secu­rity at these three labs, and at all 10 University cam­puses.
THERE’S MORE: Shortly after his Congressional tes­ti­mony today, Doran lashed out at Los Alamos offi­cials who have tried to down­play secu­rity gaps.
“After 9/​11, any time you can go on lab prop­erty and not get approached by a guard, that’s a seri­ous prob­lem,” he said.
Lab offi­cers have said that they area I went into over the week­end wasn’t an impor­tant facil­ity. To that, Doran replied, “if it’s not a big deal, why have a guard at all? Why not just open the gate?”

NUKE LAB FIRES BACK
Los Alamos National Laboratory offi­cials have had a vari­ety of responses to my story yes­ter­day in Wired News about sneak­ing into the lab.
Before the story came out, they said that TA-​​33 was an secret, secure area; no way could an intruder walk in, they asserted.
After the story broke, these offi­cials then told reporters that TA-​​33 isn’t all that impor­tant, on the whole. There’s just a tiny area that’s secure, and there’s no way I could have got­ten into that. But the descrip­tion they gave of this secure area sounds a whole lot like to one I was in.
Lastly, they asserted that the fences I walked around and over didn’t even belong to the lab. According to Congressional Quarterly, “the barbed wire Schachtman (sic) reported climb­ing over, (a lab spokesman) added, was erected years ago by the res­i­dents of a neigh­bor­ing pueblo to keep live­stock from wan­der­ing onto the government’s land.“
But if the neigh­bors put up the fences, what were all those Department of Energy signs doing on them?

LOS ALAMOS IGNORED FRAUD WARNINGS
“Officials at the trou­bled Los Alamos National Laboratory allegedly ignored for months the con­cerns of a lab sub­con­trac­tor that employ­ees appeared to be using the lab’s pur­chas­ing sys­tem to buy per­sonal items,” the Los Angeles Times reports.

The con­tract employee, iden­ti­fied as Jaret McDonald of Los Alamos, has been sub­poe­naed to appear today at a hear­ing before a con­gres­sional sub­com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing alle­ga­tions of finan­cial irreg­u­lar­i­ties and mis­man­age­ment at the nuclear weapons lab.
McDonald, who works for a lab­o­ra­tory sup­port ser­vices com­pany called KSL, tried at least twice between September 2001 and June 2002 to bring his con­cerns to the atten­tion of lab offi­cials. When they took no action, Johnson said, McDonald sent an anony­mous tip to the FBI, which launched an inves­ti­ga­tion and issued search war­rants for the homes and vehi­cles of sev­eral lab employees.

HOW I SNUCK INTO LOS ALAMOS
There are no armed guards to knock out. No sen­sors to deac­ti­vate. No sur­veil­lance cam­eras to crip­ple. To sneak into Los Alamos National Laboratory, the world’s most impor­tant nuclear research facil­ity, all you do is step over a few strands of rusted, calf-​​high barbed wire.
I should know. On Saturday morn­ing, I slipped into and out of a top-​​secret area of the lab while guards sat, unaware, less than a hun­dred yards away.
Despite the nation’s height­ened ter­ror alert sta­tus, despite loom­ing con­gres­sional hear­ings into the lab’s mis­man­age­ment and slack-​​jawed secu­rity, an untrained per­son — armed with only the vaguest sense of the facility’s lay­out and slowed by a torn Achilles ten­don — was able to repeat­edly gain access to the birth­place of the atom bomb.
For details — and pic­tures — click on over to my Wired News story here.
THERE’S MORE: Los Alamos is sep­a­rated from Bandelier National Mounment by New Mexico State Road 4. Hikers fre­quently pull off to the side of the Route 4 to admire the snow-​​touched Jemez moun­tains, or to take a walk through the desert’s mul­ti­col­ored stones. A Bandelier park ranger tells nature-​​lovers that they can “go hike on Energy Department lands” if they don’t want to pay Bandelier’s $10 park­ing fee.
“You can even bring your dog,” she adds.
AND MORE: One reader e-​​mails in the fol­low­ing story about his expe­ri­ence with the Los Alamos secu­rity system:

Doesn’t sur­prise me a bit. I had to work there for a joint project… One of the labs is on the prop­erty of the Los Alamos hotel. We were told to meet a few physi­cists up there after din­ner one night to keep work­ing. They assured us that get­ting in was impos­si­ble and we’d need to be escorted. During the day, this was true. We’d be stopped by a guard at the front desk.
Well, the door was propped open by a lazy jan­i­tor who was tak­ing out garbage so we marched right in. Right at the door, were sev­eral boxes of printed brochures of data. We laughed and took the ele­va­tor up our­selves. When we knocked on their door, they just about had a heart attack.
“How’d you get up here?” “Walked in. The door is propped open by your clean­ing crew.” They admit­ted to hav­ing issues with the clean­ing dept.

AND MORE: Los Alamos main­tains an inven­tory of hand­guns, as well as “rocket-​​propelled grenade launch­ers, mor­tars, can­non, etc., (that) are used in pro­jec­tile and high-​​explosives research. The Laboratory also owns a small num­ber of tran­quil­izer dart guns used in ani­mal stud­ies,” accord­ing to lab press release.
Until recently, how­ever, Los Alamos couldn’t “quickly con­firm that all firearms owned by the Laboratory were accounted for.” Now, in a state­ment issued today, Los Alamos said that prob­lem has been fixed.
AND MORE: Many peo­ple sent in com­ments say­ing that my story wasn’t a big deal, because the area into which I went wasn’t suf­fi­ciently top-​​secret. If I had walked out with, say, a wheel­bar­row full of ura­nium, then they would have been impressed.
Well, in 1997, dur­ing a secu­rity train­ing sim­u­la­tion, sol­diers were able to do just that. In 2000, dur­ing a sim­i­lar exer­cise, feaux bad guys “gain(ed) access to the reac­tor fuel poten­tially caus­ing a siz­able nuclear det­o­na­tion that would have taken out part of New Mexico and caused havoc down­wind.“
I’m a scared, out-​​of-​​shape lum­mox with­out any mil­i­tary train­ing what­so­ever, and with no moti­va­tion to do any­thing harm­ful. Yet I got into an area that I was assured could not be accessed by any out­sider e an area that no one will even say offi­cially what it’s pur­pose is.
If I could do what I did and these sim­u­lated attack­ers could made such spec­tac­u­lar inroads A what could a more deter­mined adver­sary accom­plish? That’s the ques­tion my story asks.
Several read­ers of Slashdot said that TA-​​33 couldnt have been that impor­tant, if Bussolini and Alexander stored their allegedly fraudulently-​​purchased goods there, and if I was able to get in.
To that, one Slashdot reader replied, “I’m not com­fort­able assum­ing that the build­ings he man­aged to get into were use­less just based on the fact that he was able to access them. It seems like that sort of head-​​in-​​the-​​sand cir­cu­lar logic does not good secu­rity prac­tices make.“
I agree.

DIALING FOR DICTATORS
Dropping leaflets is so Gulf War I. Now, when American psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare spe­cial­ists want to con­vince Iraq’s higher-​​ups to give up, they call Saddam’s men on their pri­vate cell phones, accord­ing to the New York Times.
This tele­mar­ket­ing bar­rage fol­lows in the wake of a U.S. effort to sway Iraqi opin­ion by send­ing out unso­licited e-​​mail to Iraq’s decision-​​makers.

A WELL-​​TESTED EYE IN THE SKY
With so much sophis­ti­cated spy tech­nol­ogy at the ready, why is the U.S. mil­i­tary using a nearly 50 year-​​old plane to hunt for Saddam’s illicit arse­nal? Because the ven­er­a­ble U-​​2 eye in the sky, cruis­ing at 70,000 feet, can do things other spy gear can’t, MSNBC reports.

It can peer through clouds, while satel­lites require clear skies. It cap­tures images nearly in real time, and can maneu­ver itself to whichever patch of ground that intel­li­gence ana­lysts want to see; satel­lites oper­ate on a fixed ground track through their orbit, which makes them pre­dictable for those on the ground who want to hide. 

All of these argu­ments could be made about unmanned air­craft, too. But, unlike drones, U-​​2s fly at 70,000 feet — higher than most ground-​​based defenses can reach.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF SURVEILLANCE
Spooked by intru­sive gov­ern­ment data­base pro­grams, like the CAPPS-​​II pas­sen­ger screen­ing sys­tem and Total Information Awareness? Not enough. Read this “day-​​in-​​the-​​life” arti­cle, which details the many ways that the gov­ern­ment will be able to snoop on you. From the DVDs you rent to e-​​mail you read to the route you take to work, there’s fright­en­ingly lit­tle that will escape the feds’ search­ing eyes.