Someone Swiped a 1 TB Disk From Clinton White House Archives

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It has been reported that some dumbass working at the National Archives in College Park, MD left a 1 TB drive he was working on lying around and someone swiped it. The drive was from the Clinton White House and contained sensitive information, including social security numbers, operations procedures for the White House and probably a couple hundred gigs of porn of naked cheerleaders and interns.

From the AP here:

The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures.  One of former Vice President Al Gore’s three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.

The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of the matter.  The drive is missing from the Archives facility in College Park, Md., a Washington suburb. The drive was lost between October 2008 and March 2009 and contained 1 terabyte of data. The hard drive was moved from a “secure” storage area to a workspace while it was in use. At least 100 badge-holders had access to the area where the hard drive was left unsecured.

Besides those with official access to sensitive material, janitors, visitors, interns and others passed through the area. Further, the workspace is in an area that Archives workers pass through on their way to the bathroom and the door often is left open for ventilation.

I got this story from FARK where the headline stated that construction was going on at the time, but this fact is not mentioned in the article.  This could be insider information which could better explain the loss.

The drive is probably a collection of other drives, as 1 TB drives weren’t in wide use 10 years ago.  Every federal facility records the social security numbers of official visitors, so that’s probably how Gore’s daughter’s PII ended up on the disk.  And if it is a collection of other drives, then sure, operations information on secret service duty rosters and other operational information that may be sensitive or even classified might be on the disk.  Also note that the door is “left open for ventilation?”  Contrary to what you see on television, just about all government buildings are crappy, broken down places to work.  Its no surprise to me that the AC would be broken.

Hey, maybe someone should check Sandy Berger’s pants.  He is fond of stealing documents from the Clinton era. Michelle Malkin also suspects Berger is up to his old tricks.