On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801
293.html 

On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws
Ex-Lockheed Worker Takes Concerns Over Coast Guard Ships to the Web

By Griff Witte 
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 29, 2006; Page D01 

Michael De Kort was frustrated.

The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He
had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.

But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical
security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort
did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made
a video and posted it on YouTube.com.

"What I am going to tell you is going to seem preposterous," De Kort
solemnly tells viewers near the outset of the 10-minute clip. Posted three
weeks ago, the video describes what De Kort says are blind spots in the
ship's security cameras, equipment that malfunctions in cold weather and
other problems. "It may be very hard for you to believe that our government
and the largest defense contractor in the world [are] capable of such
alarming incompetence and can make ethical compromises as glaring as what I
am going to describe." In response to De Kort's charges, a Coast Guard
spokeswoman said the service has "taken the appropriate level of action." A
spokeswoman for the contractors said the allegations were without merit.

A Web site normally reserved for goofy home-movie outtakes and Paris Hilton
parodies may seem an odd place to blow the whistle on potential national
security lapses that require complex technical explanations. But receiving
millions of hits a day and carrying the intimacy of video, YouTube.com and
other sites have become an alluring venue for insiders like De Kort who want
to go directly to the public when they think no one within the system is
listening.

...


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