Intelligence Gap: How a Chinese National Gained Access to Arizona’s Terror Center

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.propublica.org/article/lizhong-fan

By Ryan Gabrielson, ProPublica and Andrew Becker, Center for Investigative 
Reporting, illustration by David Sleight, ProPublica
August 26, 2014

LIZHONG FAN’S DESK WAS AMONG A CROWD of cubicles at the Arizona Counter 
Terrorism Information Center in Phoenix. For five months in 2007, the 
Chinese national and computer programmer opened his laptop and enjoyed 
access to a wide range of sensitive information, including the Arizona 
driver’s license database, other law enforcement databases, and 
potentially a roster of intelligence analysts and investigators.

The facility had been set up by state and local authorities in the 
aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, and so, out of concerns about 
security, Fan had been assigned a team of minders to watch him nearly 
every moment inside the center. Fan, hired as a contract employee 
specializing in facial recognition technology, was even accompanied to the 
bathroom.

However, no one stood in Fan’s way when he packed his equipment one day in 
early June 2007, then returned home to Beijing.

There’s a lot that remains mysterious about Fan’s brief tenure as a 
computer programmer at the Arizona counterterrorism center. No one has 
explained why Arizona law enforcement officials gave a Chinese national 
access to such protected information. Nor has anyone said whether Fan 
copied any of the potentially sensitive materials he had access to.

But the people responsible for hiring Fan say one thing is clear: The 
privacy of as many as 5 million Arizona residents and other citizens has 
been exposed. Fan, they said, was authorized to use the state’s driver’s 
license database as part of his work on a facial recognition technology. 
He often took that material home, and they fear he took it back to China.

[...]

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