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5 TSA Workers Put on Leave Following Screening Manual Leak
The Department of Homeland Security has placed five transportation security employees on leave following the inadvertent leak of a sensitive manual detailing security procedures for screening passengers at airports. The workers, all employees of the Transportation Security Administration, were put on administrative leave while an investigation is being conducted into how the security breach occurred, according to the Associated Press. The TSA manual was posted at a government procurement site last March by a private government contractor and was uncovered by a blogger on Sunday.
Continue reading »Ethics Committee Staffer Leaks Secrets On File-Sharing Network
A staff member of the House Ethics Committee is being blamed for accidentally leaking a sensitive document over a peer-to-peer network from her home computer. The 22-page, confidential document, listing the names of more than 30 lawmakers who are under investigation by the Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics, found its way to the Washington Post after a now ex-employee inadvertently placed it in a file-sharing folder on her home computer, according to Politico.com. Some of the probes involve congressional representatives linked to a now-defunct lobbying firm that was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for issues related to defense spending and influence peddling.
Continue reading »Congress ethics inquiry probe leaked online
p2pnet news view P2P | Politics:- A report saying the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides are being investigated about concerns including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling has been leaked online. It, “appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations,” says the newspaper. “The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.” The 22-page Committee on Standards Weekly Summary Report, “gives brief summaries of ethics panel investigations of the conduct of 19 lawmakers and a few staff members,” says the story, going on the committee’s review of investigations, “became available on file-sharing networks because of a junior staff member’s use of the software while working from home … ” The staffer was fired, says the story.
Continue reading »Making legal documents free
Programmers from Princeton, Harvard and the Internet Archive have produced a Firefox plug-in designed to make millions of pages of legal documents free, says Wired . RECAP , “rides along as one usually uses PACER,” but automatically checks if the document is already in its own database,” says the story, continuing: “The plug-in’s tagline, ‘Turning PACER around,’ alludes to the fact that its name comes from spelling PACER backwards. RECAP’s database is being seeded with millions of bankruptcy and Federal District Court documents, which have been donated, bought or gotten for free by open-government advocate Carl Malamud and fellow travelers such as Justia .
Continue reading »Confidential list of US nuke sites ends up on Wikileaks
As a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the US regularly prepares a report on its civilian nuclear program for the Agency, which provides a detailed listing of the sites and assets of the nuclear power industry throughout the US. Although most of the information is available from other sources, the report is, quite reasonably, considered very sensitive. Over the weekend, however, the Federation of American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog noticed that the document had appeared on the website of the Government Printing Office.
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