With federal government bloat, there's always someone to blame. With the former Bush Administration's push for the use of contractors, now there are even more to blame.
ABC News reports the latest on Congress' probe of the TSA incident in which a nearly-classified SSI document was posted in full online.
The Transportation Security Administration's secret airport screening manual may have been posted online by a government contract employee or even a temp – and once it had happened, someone tried to black out evidence that it was secret.
Who can forget Jon Stewart's piece on TSA's gaffe? The Transportation Security Administration posted its 93-page security manual online, in what ABC News labels "a 'How To' for Terrorists to Get Through Airport Security."
Adding insult to injury -- as Jon Stewart points out -- someone also tried to redact the Sensitive Security Information (SSI) manual but failed. (Try this on for logic: It's SSI, yet some pieces are MORE SSI than others) SOMEONE tried to redact the PDF file by drawing black boxes over pieces of the manual. It took all of nanoseconds for anyone remotely computer literate to "decode" it.
Gawker writes:
The TSA did have the good sense to redact all the stuff they though terrorists might use to game the screening system and get through with weapons, but because they are stupid federal bureaucrats they simply drew little boxes over the secret stuff in the pdf files. So "hackers," by which we mean "people with Acrobat Professional," simply removed the boxes and looked at what was underneath.
Well, it looks like the Senate is inquiring about this SOMEONE, and Gawker may not be entirely correct about his or her identity. That is, he or she may not have been a "stupid federal bureaucrat." He or she may have been a stupid federal contractor. And to top it off, that stupid federal contractor may have been hired for his or her expertise in technology.
ABC News reports
Current TSA employees who wish not to be named say that all Information Technology work at TSA is outsourced, and that most likely the faulty redaction and posting of the manual was done by a contracted employee or temp worker.
The improperly redacted manual was first posted on the Federal Business Opportunity web site on Mar. 3, but the person who redacted the document forgot to black out the marking "Sensitive Security Information."
A cached version of the Federal Business Opportunity website shows that someone noticed the mistake nearly two weeks later. Someone posted a new version of the SOP on Mar. 16th and blacked out "Sensitive Security Information."
Yet this person still didn't realize that all the document's redactions had been done improperly, and that all the blacked-out portions could be easily uncovered by computer savvy online readers.
As David Waldman reports in Today in Congress, the House Transportation Security and Infrastructure Protection Subcommittee is investigating, "Has the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) Breach Jeopardized National Security? An Examination of What Happened and Why." At this point, I think we know the answer to the question. We need to know why and what we are going to do to prevent this from happening again.