Los Alamos Security Infiltrated By Reporter

morcheeba writes "Wired reported Noah Shachtman gives a first-hand account of his entry into a high-security area at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yes, there are pictures. It seems that the birthplace of the atom bomb is being guarded by string, backed up by guards with empty holsters. There's a little more info on Noah's Defense Tech website."

Borders

Sneaking onto the grounds on LANL is like saying its a feat to sneak across the US-Mexico border.

Re:Borders

No kidding, I'd be more interested in an article about someone (anyone) who couldn't do it. At least then we'd get to read about the ass kicking he got when he was caught.

Re:Borders

Most of the lab grounds are open access. I have photos of some of the same regions from hikes I took around the region. The "No Trespassing" signs that he took pictures of don't say "No Trespassing" because it's a top secret region, they say it because if you walk past them, you will plummet off a cliff to your immediate death. The fences are there for protection of hikers, not security. The REAL secured areas of the lab have high quality prison caliber barbed-wire fences, video surveillance entirely surrounding the area, armed guards in watch towers, and you aren't even permitted to slow down when driving past.

Basically, this reporter took a glorified hiking tour of the region, but missed most of the beautiful landscape of the area.

Trespassing

How is it that reporters never get nailed for criminal trespass?

Re:Trespassing

A literature prof once told me never to get in a fight with a journalist: they control the media and they tend to stick together.

I don't think he'll see jailtime. At most he will get a suspended sentence. Otherwise, other journalist will raise hell.

Re:Trespassing

The reason the US didn't rank well was due to their hesitacny to allow unprepared reporters into combat zones.

The report was heavily biased BTW, for Political Reasons.

Re:Trespassing

you know, usa didn't rank that well on the free press ranking of reporters without borders.

Yes, mostly because the Reporters without Borders people think that the press should be above the law. To quote the report:

The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.

Why some people think that reporters should be able to disregard the law is beyond me.

Re:Trespassing

Well, I tend to think that protection of sources is a valid concern.

Re:Trespassing

Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court.

This one actually is bad. Journalism is about getting the truth, and the truth is often stifled by threats to the people who have it. By keeping sources secret, the journalists help the truth to get out while protecting those involved.

Re:Trespassing

Ok... let's say I'm a reporter. I get a call from a Son-of-Sam-like serial killer or a drug kingpin. Since many serial killers do it to make headlines, he wants an interview. Being a reporter and also wanting to make headlines, I accept. The cops read the interview and want to know everything about the guy. I refuse to tell them.

Please explain to me how I am not both legally and morally responsible for my actions? These people will go off and kill in the future and I did nothing to stop them.

There's a difference between reporting something that's politically sensitive and being irresponsible. When Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson advocated strong freedom of the press over 200 years ago, they had the former in mind. Reporters are supposed to use the truth to enlighten and protect people. Unfortunately, many reporters aren't after the truth these days; they're after the big stories and the prestige they bring. This is absolutely NOT in the spirit of the law.

Re:Trespassing

They do, but who would report it?

Here [triggur.org] is a tour of a 'top secret' nuclear missile silo from some people with too much time on their hands.

Re:Trespassing

That was great. What I was waiting for, though was:

You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Re:Trespassing

It's hard to make it stick, for one, especially if they find evidence of some sort of mismanagement.

For the second, do you know how much publicity would come of trying to prosecute a reporter for reporting the truth? This story will fade away into the background in a day or two if they just ignore it, or release a noncommittal statement. A few heads will quietly roll among the security staff and that will be it.

If they try to prosecute it becomes a story of how an incompetent government is incapable of protecting any nation secrets while AT THE SAME TIME trying to impinge on the Freedom of the Press clause in the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights will never get amended because the freaks on the Left would rather die than see freedom of speech/assembly/the press impinged upon, and the freaks on the Right would rather die than see the Right to Bear Arms/Freedom of Religion touched.

On top of all this, this country's leaders are cravenly attached to opinion polls, and opnion polls are VERY strongly influenced by the press, which means that ANY government official is going to be VERY careful before trying to stick it to a member of the press.

Heh. Not exactly the short answer.

Re:Trespassing

"

For the second, do you know how much publicity would come of trying to prosecute a reporter for reporting the truth?"

I think you're quite wrong. Reporters aren't allowed to break the law in the interests of reporting a story. "Uh, your honor, I shot and killed that liquor store owner in the process of demonstrating how easily it is to buy a gun and use it to hold up a liquor store." No journalism school will ever teach a student that they can try to break into buildings--much less secure government buildings--without being liable for prosecution.

Watch. He will be prosecuted, and any journalists that try to make a fuss about it will be shown the secure facilities and then be reminded that trying to break into a government facility is a bad idea, regardless. The reporter will be shown to be the fool that he is.

Re:Trespassing

You wrote:

"

I don't agree that it was nothing of consequence. He was able to enter, without breaking in, a facility considered secret. He deomnstrated that the level of security that was claimed didn't exist, and that it may well be possible for someone so minded to wreak havoc at the facility."

An AC wrote:

"

Gaining unauthorized access to a Top Secret nuclear weapons facility is not "of any real consequence"? Perhaps he should have tried to remove some material from that shack he was in, that would make you happy, that would be something of consequence?"

And another AC wrote:

"

Anyone can get in, and the ARMED SECURITY don't even have weapons in their holster!"

As I've written elsewhere, Los Alamos National Laboratories is not a single, secure facility. There are seperate facilities scattered throughout the area. Each of these facilities are seperately secured.

Here is a page describing LANL, and includes a map [globalsecurity.org]. Notice the scale of the map and how huge an area LANL covers. Notice that TA-33 is one of the most remote facilities.

And here is a pdf in two parts (part one [atomictraveler.com] and part two [atomictraveler.com]) that describes every tech area, and includes maps. The description and map of TA-33 is in part one.

Looking at the detail of the area of TA-33 near Highway 4 (because there's a whole bunch of TA-33 away from the highway!), I see dozens of buildings. Clearly, the writer couldn't have approached either of the two buildings that are designated as being in the "hazard category" because they are well within the perimeter of TA-33 and along the main roadway that serves the cluster of buildings at that northern portion of TA-33. He tries to make it sound as if the whole of TA-33--a huge area covering a range of terrain--is or should be guarded with high-level perimeter security and that, once he crossed the perimeter into TA-33, he was "in". But this is just silly. Buildings within technical areas have their own security, and the most senstitive buildings have the most intense security. He walked up to a "silver building" that was near the roadway. Big deal! That means nothing.

You and all the other people here who don't know anything about LANL are being misled by this writer who is preying upon your preconceived ideas about what such an installation is like. LANL is not like what most people imagine. There are lower and higher level security areas. There are areas that are essentially completely insecure. It covers a huge amount of territory, in some cases seemingly intermingled with the town.

I have nothing but contempt for this writer because he took a stupid risk for a trivial payoff. If he believed that the labs were insecure in this way, then he should have researched what the most sensitive buildings were, and attempted to enter them. As it is, his account reads like someone who was driving around, saw that the fence ended, and decided to snoop in the name of journalism. Then, afterwards, he contacted some "sources" and used their claim that TA-33 involved "black-op" stuff to make it seem like the one little portion of it he tresspassed upon was itself important.

He doesn't provide a map, doesn't provide a description of TA-33, doesn't tell you how much area TA-33 covers, doesn't tell you how many different buildings there are. He provides no context from which the ignorant reader can evaluate his claims of discovering a serious security lapse. He does, however, through insinuation and omission, strongly imply that he's done something extraordinary. But he hasn't.

Breaking the law in this manner should be punished regardless. Nevertheless, I'd be willing to applaud his efforts and courage if he was actually doing something worthwhile and noble. Instead, he's grandstanding and being stupid about it, to boot. He deserves to be thrown in jail just for being such a pathetic example of a journalist.

No Criminal Intent

Because, by definition, "criminal" trespass requires "criminal" intent, or the intent to do harm.

Walking across someone's lawn is not criminal. Reporters trespass on government property in order to cause embarrassment; and their documentation and disclosure of their actions proves this.

We would be in a world of shit if journalists were prevented from embarrassing our government.

Re:No Criminal Intent

Actually, intent is crucial in the most important cases. You have the "actus reus" - the criminal act, and the "mens rea" - the criminal mind.

For example, you kill someone - a criminal act. If it is shown that you didn't intend to kill them (for example, that your brakes failed), you have no criminal intent.

Some types of crimes require intent, others don't. So, while you won't be convicted of murder i n the above case, if it is shown that you were aware the brakes were defective and that you neglected to do anything about it, you will probably be convicted of manslaughter. :-(

Re:Trespassing

"How is it that reporters never get nailed for criminal trespass?"

A precedent was established quite a few years ago when they failed to convict a well known reporter. Whenever witnesses went down the lineup, they were never able to positively I.D. Mr. Kent because he kept taking his glasses off.

Not a big deal.

As was said in the guy's article:

"We didn't fence all 43 square miles," said lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano. "But if you're near an area that matters, you can't get in."

He didn't find anything important, he went into a historical building. It's not as if he was able to go hug a nuke, he was able to get into a old run down facility.

Great, I can also sneak into any old abandoned warehouse, perhaps one that was really important a few years ago.. but it's still not ground breaking. If it was important, I'm sure this bumbling reporter wouldn't have stumbled into the place.

Re:Not a big deal.

There are a number of areas in the U.S. that one would think were difficult to get into. Years ago, in high school a couple of friends of mine and I managed to accidently find ourselves in a restricted area because of a complete lack of signs. Facilities in Texas, Utah, Nevada and Washington state all have outer perimeters that are very easy to get into. However, I can assure you getting into central portions of those facilities would prove almost impossible. Especially those facilities with the double perimeter razor wire topped fencing. These facilities typically have armed guards with sidearms (as opposed to what the images in the article would indicate) and long guns. Biometric identification is also being installed in many of these buildings as well and all people entering and leaving are photographed.

However, all that said. Security for employees at those facilities can many times be pretty lax.

Re:Not a big deal.

I used to work at the national monument right near Los Alamos (Bandelier National Monument). There are certain places that are staffed around the clock with guards in watch towers. All have M16s, and probably some larger machine guns near by.

I doubt this guy got near anything of importance.

Re:Not a big deal.

I dunno about you, but 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 want to see an investigation by someone not under lab management. Once that's completed, if they don't find that security was crap, I'll feel better about it. Until then, it seems to be that the healthy attitude is one of caution.

Re:Not a big deal.

I worked at the lab until last year. TA-33 is not something to worry about. The laboratory has literally scores of square miles of unused property and dozens of old abandoned buildings out in remote areas. It's not worth taxpayers $$ to keep that crap well guarded.

Actual nukes are kept in compounds surrounded by two 16ft razor wire chain link fences under constant watch by guards in watch towers and security cameras. I've always wondered if the space between those fences was mined...

Re:Not a big deal to us, but...

"

Keep in mind that the nuclear bomb technology we came up with during WWII is still not within the technical grasp of many nations."

That's not true. Today, most nations with a reasonably adequate industrial capacity could manufacture a weapon. It's often noted that every single nation that's built a bomb has achieved success with their first test.

Do you consider Pakistan to be a scientific/technical powerhouse? South Africa built a couple of bombs to prove they could, and then promptly became the only country to acquire the capacity and then destroy it.

The problem isn't that it's that enormously hard to do, it's that it's pretty hard to do in secret. The whole international weapons control works pretty well. Look at Iraq.

Gordon Freeman?

I wonder if he saw Gordon Freeman by any chance while he was there?

Evolution in Action

> Around facilities like the biology lab, where anthrax and other biotoxins have been handled, no sentries stand guard at all. Nor is there any kind of fence to keep the curious and the malicious away -- not even a piece of string.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent anyone from just walking in and, *sniffle*, exploring and *wheeze*, doing whatever they *cough, hack, choke*, gawddamn, I feel like crap today. Better go have a lie down before I write the rest of this article. *glurgle*

And in other news...

Sadam Hussein has quit Iraq and is now providing his services to the US arms establishment as a consultant specializing in making defense laboratories bloody difficult to find.
All we need is a bunch of UN arms inspectors touring the US looking for nukes in the presidential palaces and such security issues will soon be fixed!

Re:And in other news...

It does make you wonder why dictators have -- apparently -- security strong enough to stave off attacks by the most powerful army on the planet, yet the government of the most powerful army on the planet allows two-bit Wired.com writers to walk about and write alarmist pieces about the state of security in America and pretend that all they need to do to get a nuke is go down to the gift shop and say, "That one there. The one sitting by the squash-blossom necklace."

I mean, if Baghdad's purported subway system -- which was never used for subways but is instead used to hustle WMDs from one part of the city to the other, avoiding all the Corona-eyes-in-the-sky-satellites and all weapons inspectors -- is enough to stymie the *entire globe*, then shouldn't we be taking lessons from these assholes about how to secure our ops and nukes from a bunch of understaffed, underpaid terrorist cells who live eight-to-a-room in Ma McChesney's Motel Six off Insterstate 80?

Canadian Security

Apparently, security at Los Alamos is run by the same folks who allowed the knife-weilding lunatic [cnn.com] break into Prime Minister Chretien's home and threaten his wife for half an hour.

Well, that's encouraging.

Thank God that once we beat Iraq we won't have to worry about terrorism anymore.

Seriously, though, doesn't it seem like there's just one security failure after another at these labs recently? I remember after the Wen Ho Lee "incident" they tightened things up to the point where the scientists were complaining, but apparently that was just a temporary thing.

It seems to me that installations which are especially key deserve much closer attention than they seem to get. Why isn't there a national security force staffed by professionals? They could guard non-military installations which have specific value, like nuclear plants, dams and national labs.

This is just another example of how nothing's changed since 9-11 except our willingness to give away our rights to those who consider themselves our masters [cnn.com]. It's getting depressing to watch as we (the US) waste our time and attention on imaginary or, at best, overinflated threats [cia.gov] while doing nothing to focus on our real problems.

My favorite part...

...was when he said that the area he had gotten into was a big top-secret area "according to lab sources".

It turns out that my basement is actually a top-secret area for Los Alamos National Labs too. My sources from the lab told me so.

See

Anybody can come over and inspect the US weapons of mass destruction. We'll leave the light on for you, just let yourself in. If you want to phone in a report, there's a few pay phones over there.

Not as easy as it looks

I visited there in 1999 to interview one of the astrophysicists. He took me to his lab where they had prototypes of the first gamma-ray burst detectors on display in the hall. When I remarked on how easy it was to drive into the base and asked how they keep people out of the interesting parts, he pointed down the hall. There was a floor-to-ceiling turnstile gate that you had to go through to reach a sensitive area. If your badge was not valid, the gate locked until the guards with dogs came to retrieve you. Security is a series of screens. He penetrated the first and flimsiest screen (and probably not really unnoticed). I'd be more impressed and worried if he got into (and out of) the building I saw that was surrounded by 10-foot-high fences capped with razor wire and watched by TV cameras every 50 feet or so.

Not Exactly News...

Forgive me, but having grown up in Los Alamos, I could have told ya that. Sheesh. Kids in Los Alamos have been a pest for LANLites for years. The security isn't the best for many areas.

Additionally, a few years ago, a peace activitist walked into the lobby of the plutonium processing plant (iirc) to pray for peace. This was in a supposed Cross-This-Line-and-We-Shoot-to-Kill area. Funny that. He certainly didn't get riddled. Good thing he didn't carry, say, a whole lot of plastic explosives with the intent of being a suicide bomber, huh?

Finally, even during the Cold War, one of the guys that worked in a sensitive area wore a hat with a KGB symbol on it. He wore it walking in and out as a joke with his coworkers. They, the guards, never even inquired about it. While it was a joke, and the guards might have gotten in on it, a large part of what made it funny was that the guards never even batted an eye.

Mission Ineptitude

"We didn't fence all 43 square miles," said lab spokeswoman Nancy Ambrosiano. "But if you're near an area that matters, you can't get in."

If you read the article, it turns out this boob managed to infiltrate a "Top-Secret" storage shed for illicit camping gear. There are probably thousands of facilities around the country that house classified facilities that you could still walk into the lobby of and claim to have infiltrated. You can drive onto many military bases around the country, untill you get to the defenses that protect anything important. Shachtman is trully a l33t j00rnul15t.

Nothing new to see here...

Oh come on... what a disappointing article.

So a guy with a camera hops a fense in the middle of a radioactive desert, and snaps a few pics of some ominous-looking signs near said fence. Big friggin' deal. Just like those photos of Area 51. Who cares? Did he try to go any deeper? Has he asked or thought about why that section was so accessible?

I used to work in a large engine manufacturing plant, that was built during WWII. The sprawl was almost incomprhensible, and even more so when you realized there were caverns underneath the entire complex. Not much went on down there in the late 90's, and most of it was unlit.. nobody really had any business going thru there. Nonetheless, I wandered around one day, and found a room full of dusty forgotten file cabinets, filled with, among other things, the full and complete HR records of people who had worked for the comapny and since died, long before I was even born. Birthdates, positions held, SSNs, all that. Another cabinet had some old drawings, and who knows what else I could have found. Some would see this was a huge deal (I guess leaving all sorts of personnel records around IS pretty stupid), but come on!

One floor above, and barely 100 yards away was a maximum-security area for prototype testing and research. I only got to go back there with escorts ranking up with the plant manager.

Yeah, I probably would have gotten in deep doodoo if I'd been caught snooping in the caverns, but the real areas of interest were protected. I'm sure that goes on in Los Alamos and evereywhere else. At least I HOPE so!

Big Deal!

So this guy got onto the grounds of the lab, and was able to access a decrepid old shack. I'll bet money he couldn't have gotten anywhere where there was top-secret research or information.

Woopdi Do

So he made it onto the grounds and into an abandoned buiilding. They have problems with coyotes doing the same thing. Most of the grounds are not guarded or even fenced in. Its parameter is some 40 miles. There are even trailer houses in the unsecure areas, for civilian paperwork and such, sometimes known are the Leper Colony. The secure parts are, however, quite secure. Surveillance, armed guards and razor wire galore. This area is still not very interesting. The good stuff is wrapped in a couple more layers. Even someone with Q clearance cannot take a recording device or cell phone in there.

Re:If this is how...

Any security system is vulnerable. The best place to store sensitive documentation is in a pile of corporate memos about new document formatting guidelines, not in the safe. A thief will burn through the safe lock, and steal the contents and ignore the piles of junk on your desk, because only a fool would leave valuable things out when they had such an expensive safe. Likewise, the best way to protect national security assets is to build a really big base, surround it with armed guards, leak stories about alien tech being developed there and make it the centre of attention, while you do all you real research in an unmarked warehouse in Dullsville.

Re:If this is how...

Distraction definitely would be an excellent way to handle security. But you would make a big show about the base, and yet the "dullville" warehouse would still have high security, just not as obvious. This would be a "just in case" measure. In case someone accidentally found out about the warehouse.

The art of security is not to completely prevent someone from seeing something. That's impossible. Rather, you want to slow them down. ie. encryption that takes 100s of years. A safe that would take a long time to burn through or test all the combinations (thick walls, long combination). The goal is to slow them down, not completely stop them. Since stopping them is near impossible. (Unless you just kill them.)

This is nothing new...

From Genius--Richard Feynman and Modern Physics by James Gleick

Feynman explored most of [the Los Alamos perimiter fence's] length. When he discovered holes, with well-beaten paths leading through, he pointed them out in a spirit of good citizenship, annoyed only that the guards responded so lackadaisically. ("I explained it to him & the officer in charge," he wrote Arline, "but I bet they don't do anything.") He never realized that the holes had semiofficial sanction. The security staff tolerated them--with Oppenheimer's connivance, it seemed--so that people from the local tribes could come to the laboratory's twelve-cent movies.

It was insecure even during WWII

I remember an anecdote (in Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, I think) that Los Alamos's security was pretty lax even during the Manhattan Project. Apparently there were a few places in the gate where local Indians were occasionally let through by the scientists and workers to watch movies and hang out.

If I'm not mistaken, Los Alamos is also where Feynman got his reputation for lockpicking, since he taught himself how to break into the safes where classified documents were stored and prove to the higher-ups that security wasn't as tight as they'd wanted to believe.

The point.

The government is making this huge deal out of how security conscious they are right now. That being the case, they should be a bit more careful about random people walking around their supposedly secure facility.

No he didn't get inside any occupied building, but I'm sure there is a decent amount of stuff lying around down there that the everyday joe shouldn't have access to. Not to mention the damage a decent sized bomb could do, even nearby. Both ANFO (Here) [tisi.go.th] and Nitroglycerine are synthesizable from relatively common ingredients. A quick moving truck with a hefty payload could do massive damage. If _I_ can think of this crap THEY should damn well be thinking about it.

Oh yea, they'll never prosecute this guy. Freedom of the Press, remember? It applies to more than just the right to print papers. If they tried to prosecute him, they'd just draw more bad press.

(Heres the link in case my HTML is screwy: http://www.tisi.go.th/notif_th/fulltext/t00_370.pd f)

Happens in Virginia all the time...

We have the same thing here in Virginia. About every six month some bonehead reporter [wvec.com] sneaks through the woods and enters one of the local military bases. Morons.

Fact #1: 80% of all militay base property is landscaping and wildlife areas. The other 10% is protected to the level of needed security.

Fact #2: Without having insider knowledge of where on a military installation sensitive material is located you don't have a chance of hell of finding it wandering around - Much less penetrating any real security unimpeded.

Fact #3: Security doen't mean 100% access control. It merely means protecting assets to the degree needed to make it tough for the bad guys.

Re:Happens in Virginia all the time...

80% of all militay base property is landscaping and wildlife areas. The other 10% is protected to the level of needed security.
And I think it's the remaining 10% that we need to worry about :)

From a LANL worker....

I am an uncleared employee of LANL and I can assure you that security is top notch. I have never been allowed near any place that I am not cleared to be in. There are old buildings all over the lab (many of them unused) and NONE
of them used for anything interesting.
Regardless of the reporter's picture of the guard without the gun, the gaurds DO ave guns...lots of them. I've looked in my rearview mirror many times to find a Hummer with a roof mounted M-60 behind me. Any other labbies have something to add?

I did the same thing

It was quite a few years ago, though.
My uncle worked there. We cruised through the security gate in his CJ with Cherry Bombs roaring and I didn't see a sole at the gate. Inside I was climbing around on the experiments peeping in the portholes with no ID tag or anything. There was one experiment that was studying plasma torroids for use (and I'm not making this up) as space propulsion or for car bumper coating. I was genuinely curious so I was asking questions about their setup and stuff. They just seemed a little annoyed and busy but not alarmed or anything.
My uncle was going through his toolbox, saying, "Here - want a wrench? How 'bout this cordless soldering iron?", and I'm like, "No thanks... don't want my only trip to Los Alamos to finish with theft of government property." Pretty cool experience, all-in-all. Glad I went before things changed.

It reminds me...

One time on tv about half an hour before a broadcast advertising for the news. They said 'find out about a secret nuclear reactor, right in our own city!'

Then another commercial in the next break comes on. 'Watch as we show you a nuclear reactor, closer to your home than you probably think!' And it showed a picture of the nuclear engineering building at the local university. I burst into laughter. That reactor was hardly 'secret', it is a well advertised reactor, a very puny one. I toured it about 4 years ago....

Then the final commercial.... 'we'll show you our hidden camera investigation where our undercover reporter infiltrates security and gets into the reactor room!' And it showed a picture of something I could understand a layman mistaking for the reactor, but it certainly was not the reactor.

During the broadcast they made a big point of how they were able to see labs and classrooms, and then unveiled their 'killer' footage. The camera man, obviously excited, walks all around for a long time taking every possible shot he can of what *he* thought was a reactor, but it was just a cooling device not related to the reactor at all. About five minutes after the broadcast, they announce a correction, that they had learned that it wasn't a reactor, and that the place housing the reactor wasn't accessible, but still the thought this stuff was dangerous in the hands of terrorists because it said 'high voltage...'

The news always botches this stuff up. How many times have you seen news reports on a technology you are intimately familiar with and laughed your ass off at the inaccuracies?

double standard

if a journalist broke into a government computer systen or network to show how easy it was and the reported it he'd be labeled a "terrorist" and prosecuted for sure.

call me crazy...

Those were some pretty lame pics of Los Alamos. I mean come on, I could take a piece of string and a no trespassing sign and head to the desert and then tell the world that I infiltrated the base. A picture of a shed with a fence around it? Come on, I could find one of this with 5 blocks of my apartment. All I would have to do is put the number 33 on it and the rest of the world would probably never know. I didnt see anything credible that said "los alamos" on it that couldnt easily have been forged. For all we may know, this guy is faking it.

Sounds like he was disappointed

This same author also wrote an article [wired.com] about the shabby conditions at one of the unclassified Los Alamos sites. It's interesting that the physicist that he was interviewing did not complain about the working conditions. So why did the author make a big deal about it?

After reading both articles, my impression is that the author was expecting the entire Los Alamos complex to be some type of high tech super-secure facility, and when his expectations were not met he decided to write a couple articles blasting the place.

Quality journalism? I think not.

Not much different than most mil bases

Layers. Sure, at most US military bases, you can probably sneak over the fence and walk around. Maybe even sneak into a warehouse or other empty building.

One person walking around and getting into an office building is almost certainly no problem (depending on the alert level).

But to get to the 'good stuff' you have to go through an incredible number of steps. And there is *no way* to access anything really sensitive without quite a few people knowing and challenging you.

Exaggerated

He got into TA-33 which while labelled high security really isn't that big a deal. Now had he gotten into TA-55 with 3 layers of barbed wire, lots of guys with machine guns and other stuff *then* I'd be impressed. Hell, I'd have thought he'd have at least gotten into the secure part of the library. But no, all he did was wander into the forest near a National Park. Hell, even the unused forests up from there have motion detectors and security forces.

This is much ado about nothing.

Don't get me wrong. There is plenty to criticize about security at Los Alamos. But the article is akin to bragging that you got into the "johnny on the spot" outhouse in an used section under construction on the outskirts of a military base.

I will admit that they ought to be more secure about letting people *out* of facilities though. I used to work late and the guards left at 6 and there was only a unidirectional turnstile "guarding" the place. While there were other measures to retain building security, I could have walked out with lots of stuff had I wanted to. If I wanted to get in at night I'd just call the Pro Force and they'd let me into the building, no questions asked, so long as I had a security badge.

However lets also be honest. Most of the stuff labelled "top secret" really isn't terribly significant. The stuff that is important has a *lot* more security on it. For instance our really important servers and stuff were in sealed rooms and then inside rather large safes in those rooms. And only a few people had the passwords. We had all sorts of restrictions for cable length to avoid hacking via E&M signals. We had pretty amazing encryption devices. And the really important areas had amazing security. The weakest link, as always, tends to be the employees and not these sorts of things.

There are problems, but what this story discusses aren't they.

Re:Whoa

The truly restricted areas have big signs all over saying that the use of lethal force has been authorized within them.

This means you'd be shot on sight.

This guy didnt go anywhere important. Just a trumped up fluff-piece on how the government needs to beef up security.

Re:Whoa

Makes you wonder how many reporters in the past did NOT make it back.

Re:Worthless.

"

Would you care to point some of them out for us, please?"

Okay. The author doesn't substantiate his claim that the one building he approached (but didn't enter) is actually that sensitive of an area. It's on the list he was given. Big deal. What I'm wondering about is the materials that was supposedly stolen from there: electronic equipment and camping gear? I dunno, that doesn't sound like the kind of place that's doing super-sensitive research.

Secondly, he completely misrepresents what the Lab facilities are like. LANL is not one big, monolithic facility sitting on a single plot of land. It's got a main area, right in town (the "front gate" he refers to), and then lots of little facilities scattered all over the area. They are individually secured.

Getting in the "front gate" is no big deal because, you know, visitors are allowed in. (Unlike Sandia in Albuquerque, which is much harder to get into. But it's a single contiguous site situated within an Air Force base.)

The one facility that easily the most sensitive is the plutonium refinement facility--yes, LANL still has a reactor and refines and stores some plutonium. That area is surrounded by several staggered perimeter fences, with mines between them, dogs, guards, and "helicopter landing denial cables" strung all over the area, for good measure.

Then, if you've ever been in any of the facilities, you'll find that there are armed guards stationed at entraces to sensitive areas within buildings. When I was in high school, and went on a tour of LANL as part of its "High School Senior Science Day", a friend of mine innocently walked down a corridor to a vending machine and was immediately physically hoisted in the air and carried back to the rest of the group by two armed guards.

Furthermore, constantly patrolling the area of the Lab, including parts of town and neighboring areas that border the labs, are MPs in Jeeps with M-16s prominently displayed.

LANL is a sprawling facility built upon finger-like mesas and in deep canyons spread over a huge area. LANL-owned land is fenced off, but for these remote facilities--like those along NM 4--are individually secured. And not all facilities are equal. Some are not that sensitive. There are a lot of relatively insecure facilities at LANL, because they do a lot more research than just weapons research. I had numerous friends who did coop work there while they were in college, and only one of them actually needed a security clearance to do her work.

LANL is, more than Livermore, and certainly more than Sandia and Oak Ridge, a very "civilian-esque" lab. They do weapons design work there, and those areas, along with the plutonium facility, you can be sure are heavily secured.

Finally, this author was an idiot. He was lucky that he tried to approach a facility that apparently isn't that sensitive. He's lucky he didn't get shot. They will shoot you. And you can bet that there will be criminal charges filed against him for this. Imbecile.

Re:Fallout 3?

As long as you *look* like you belong there, getting in isn't a problem.
This is actually true. I've spent some time working in secure military facilities in the UK, and on my first few days I wondered around looking lost. I was regularly challenged, and had to show my badge (which I was wearing in a visible location anyway). In places like this you are required to challenge anyone who is not displaying their pass openly, and can by in trouble if you fail to do so.

A few weeks later I went for to the canteen in another part of the site, then to the personnel office, in another part of the site, then to a meeting in a third part of the site. It was a hot day and so I didn't wear my jacket. It was only when I returned to my desk that I saw my security pass, still attached to my jacket.

DISCLAIMER: To get onto that particular site you would have to either climb a 10 foot razor wire fence, or bluff your way past armed guards, but once you were in then you could wander about fairly freely. I didn't go anywhere particularly sensitive without my pass, but I walked past a number of security personnel, and was in ear-shot of a number of people talking about classified projects without being challenged.

Re:Fallout 3?

Nobody looks like their picture. Ever see your driver's license?

Re:Fallout 3?

You'd be amazed about how dull 90% (maybe more) of classified material is. Some things I got the impression were classified just to make them sonud interesting...

Re:Fallout 3?

This is actually quite true. I've done work as a journalist (particularly as a student) and snuck into places just by acting as if I belonged there. I'm not so stupid as to venture into military labs though.. What I'm talking about is ordering a platter of beer and sneaking backstage with it at concerts to talk to bands without their pesky PR-managers present.. Much more innocent I'd say, but it proves a point.. and the beer loosend their lips very nicely! ;-)