AW: News: Los Alamos closed (?)

["Franz Schoenhofer" <franz.schoenhofer@CHELLO.AT>]

Dear Ruth,



The notice in the reputated paper I am subscribed to stated:



"Atomlabor Los Alamos geschlossen" - which, as you know, would indicate

literarily that the gates were closed, after the last employee left - like

it was obviously the case in many copper mines in Southern Arizona, where

you still can see the hauling trains down in the pit, not having been

removed since more than 20 years.



Then it was stated "zahlreiche Sicherheitspannen". "Zahlreich" is - for

other RADSAFErs "a large number of". "Sicherheit" is an - as I recognize

only now - a difficult word to translate. It means "safety" in common

language - regarding safety from being attacked, safety from being the

object of robbery, not to fall from a ladder, but also the safety of a

state, not to be attacked by another one.



"Security" is expressed by "Sicherheit" as well, but there would normally be

some adjective, like "Military security", "State security", "Data security"

etc. Therefore I translated "Sicherheit" by "safety", especially since a

severe eye injury by a laser experiment was cited. (If youi want to respond,

that in the message also vanishing of data was mentioned I admit that you

are right.)



>From your message and all the immediate replies on RADSAFE I draw the

conclusion: Los Alamos has not been closed, just a few sensitive areas have

been closed pending investigations. So the original news have been

exaggerated as usual. It was only a very small notice (I translated  a l l

of  it) on page 9 or 11, the source was given as AP - I do not know, what

this stands for.



BTW I agree with your comment on I-25 through Albuquerque .........



Best wishes



Franz

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     -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

    Von: RuthWeiner@aol.com [mailto:RuthWeiner@aol.com]

    Gesendet: Montag, 19. Juli 2004 20:37

    An: franz.schoenhofer@CHELLO.AT; radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

    Betreff: Re: News: Los Alamos closed (?)





    .  they weren't safety mishaps but security mishaps, and there were not

a "large number:"  Three or four (I forget exactly how many) pieces of

electronic media (either disks or CDs or removable hard drives that may

contain classified information have been lost during the past couple of

years and have not been found.  From a security point of view this is indeed

very serious.  Whether the shurdown was warranted is not something I am in a

position to decide.  I say "may" contain classified information because any

electronic media that has had electronic cointact with a classified computer

is considered classified, even if it has nothing on it.



    Ruth



    RuthF. Weiner, Ph. D.

    ruthweiner@aol.com