Ex-intern attests to staffers' accounts on poached memos

Washington Times ^ | 3/02/04 | Charles Hurt

[kattracks]

The computer glitch that let Republican staffers see internal memos on Democratic staffers' computers was widely known and reported to officials long before the memos were obtained by journalists and published, a former Republican intern on the Senate Judiciary Committee said.

[singletrack]

These people want to be in charge of national security and they can't even use the password functions at work properly.

[fire_eye]

"I let my office colleagues know that the shared server was open and not secure, and that files were unprotected, and I occasionally suggested that they password-protect their folders and files," he wrote in his affidavit.

Right - and his reward was to be accused of breaking security, and getting fired.

Reminds me of a similar case where Intel hired a consultant, who pointed out various security problems with their network - in return for which Intel brought down the entire weight of their legal staff to have him prosecuted and convicted. Authoritarian idiots too stupid to do anything but shoot the messenger...

The lesson in it, of curse, is when you find a security hole, just anonymously hand it over to someone truly evil to exploit it - and then let the technically illiterate imbeciles suffer the consequences.