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Special Weapons Agency May Be Leaking Secrets
From: William Knowles <wk () C4I ORG>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 00:00:54 -0600
http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200012194.shtml By Sean Paige paige () insightmag com Many Americans may not know what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is or does, and thats probably just as well as far as the Pentagon auxiliary agency is concerned. But you can bet that potential U.S. adversaries, who one day may wind up on the business end of one of the exotic new weapons that DARPA is charged with conceptualizing, not only know what it is, but would die to get a sneak peek behind the veil of secrecy surrounding it. That might be easier than it ought to be, according to a recent security critique by the Department of Defenses Office of the Inspector General (IG), which found that DARPA controls over foreign visitors were weak and may have led to the disclosure of sensitive technical information that the United States would rather not spread around. The Pentagon has rules for clearing foreign nationals visiting its research facilities and explicit protocols concerning when and what kind of sensitive or classified information can be shared with them, according to the IG. But DARPA hosted foreign visitors without understanding or following those guidelines in 208 of 270 instances reviewed by the IG, possibly resulting in the release of sensitive, and even classified, information. In several instances cited by the IG, visiting foreign military personnel may have been briefed at higher security-clearance levels than authorized because guidance from above either was not passed on to the U.S. officials hosting the visit or disregarded by them. Although DARPA also has rules controlling access to noncitizens who work for U.S. corporations, universities or research laboratories, it infrequently abides by them, according to the report, and its Security Information Management System database often contains incomplete or inaccurate information about the hundreds of foreign visitors it is supposed to track. The IG found that about 30 percent of the individuals listed in the database had incorrect security-clearance ratings assigned to them, meaning they mistakenly could be granted access to materials which should be denied them. To illustrate the possible security problems that result, the IG cites numerous instances in which DARPA officials only belatedly learned or realized that they had been meeting with nationals from countries of concern, including China and Syria, because of inadequate advance notice or inaccurate database information. Because foreign nationals can claim to represent a U.S. entity and visit DARPA with almost no control, warns the IG, foreign nationals may be gathering sensitive information without DARPAs knowledge. *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ================================================================ C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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- Special Weapons Agency May Be Leaking Secrets William Knowles (Dec 06)