Inspector Lists Computers With Atomic Secrets as Missing

WASHINGTON, March 30 — The office in charge of protecting American technical secrets about nuclear weapons from foreign spies is missing 20 desktop computers, at least 14 of which have been used for classified information, the Energy Department inspector general reported on Friday.

This is the 13th time in a little over four years that an audit has found that the department, whose national laboratories and factories do most of the work in designing and building nuclear warheads, has lost control over computers used in working on the bombs.

Aside from the computers it cannot find, the department is also using computers not listed in its inventory, and one computer listed as destroyed was in fact being used, the audit said.

“Problems with the control and accountability of desktop and laptop computers have plagued the department for a number of years,” the report said.

In January, Linton F. Brooks was fired as the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Agency, the Energy Department agency in charge of bombs, because of security problems. The agency was created in the 1990s because of security scandals.

When the most recent audit began, the Counterintelligence Directorate was unable to find 141 desktop computers. In some cases, documents were found indicating that the computers had been taken out of service.

Previous incidents of wayward computers have also involved nuclear weapons information. But the office involved in this breach has a special responsibility, tracking and countering efforts to steal bomb information. Its computers would have material on what the department knew about foreign operatives and efforts to steal sensitive information.

The report includes a response from the security agency that generally agrees with the findings. But the inspector general, Gregory H. Friedman, noted in his report that “the comments did not include planned corrective actions with target completion dates.”

A spokesman for the department, Craig Stevens, said Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman “recognizes that we need to manage this place better.”

The counterintelligence office was recently merged with the intelligence office to improve operations, Mr. Stevens said.

The Torvalds Transcript: Why I 'Absolutely Love' GPL Version 2

On March 6, Linus Torvalds responded to e-mail questions on GPL version 3 sent by InformationWeek editor at large Charles Babcock.

InformationWeek: Can you comment on why you oppose moving the Linux kernel from GPL 2.0 to GPL 3.0?

Torvalds: First off, I don't even know what the GPLv3 will look like. I would be totally crazy to accept a license for my code sight unseen. I think people who just say "version 2 or any later version" on their code probably don't care about the license of their code enough. Before I say that "yes, you can use my code under license X," I'd better know *what* that license is.

So that's an issue totally independent of any particular GPLv3 details. The reason Linux has that "GPLv2 only" language is exactly that I simply don't want to be at the mercy of somebody else when it comes to something as important as the license I choose for my code.

So I can't even imagine why anybody would ever expect me to do anything but "v2 only." It's just stupid to do anything else.

Now, totally independently of that, I'm doubly happy that I long, long since made that decision because at least the drafts of the GPLv3 have been much worse than the GPLv2 is. They've had glaring technical problems (license proliferation with not just one single GPLv3, but "GPLv3 with various additional rights and various additional restrictions"), and while I certainly hope that the final GPLv3 won't have those obvious problems, I've been singularly unimpressed with the drafts.