The Naval Surface Warfare Center at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico has—literally—tons of IT hardware and equipment used for classified programs that need to be destroyed by the most secure and irreversible means.
While White Sands Missile Range is an Army facility, NAVSEA researchers have a detachment there working on "land-based weapons system testing, directed energy weapons testing"—lasers—"and research rocket launch support," according to their webpage. Those researchers have on hand some 4,000 pounds of IT equipment, including magnetic, optical and solid-state storage devices with highly sensitive, classified data.
The center issued a solicitation for destruction services that specifically calls for all designated equipment to be burned "to ash."
The information stored on these devices is highly sensitive, as evidenced by the physical security requirements set forth in the solicitation. The incineration facility must have "at the minimum, secure entry, 24-hour armed guards and 24/7 camera surveillance with recordable date and time capabilities."
https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2019/02/navy-needs-2-tons-storage-devices-burned-ash/154629/
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:55PM (4 children)
Sounds like they're looking for a municipal waste incineration facility - in South Florida those were owned and operated by the mob. Suuuuure, they've got armed guards and video security - especially the Russian mob.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:17PM
I know a facility in Tianjin that perfectly meets those requirements. The PLA... uhh, subcontractor will even meet the costs of shipping all the highly classified storage media there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:54PM (1 child)
Ship it to Fort Meade. The NSA does this kind of destruction as part of their job.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:47PM
Spoiler alert: The NSA is who they're trying to hide it from.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:04PM
Outsource it. Outsource IT. Same difference. Mumbai or Shanghai today sir?
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:57PM
2 tons. Can you imagine? That's a lot of yoga. That's a lot of yoga.
(Score: 1) by SvenErik on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:26PM (4 children)
They should look into using one a steel mill or other nearby melting plants. I work at a Ferro Silicon Manganese producer, and I throw hard-disks in the furnaces to get rid of them.
With that quantity, they probably have to parcel it over some time out so they will not pollute the melt too much, but should not be a big issue.
"Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Bertrand Russell
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @01:37PM (2 children)
or they could send them to Hawaii and dump them in a river of lava.
I doubt the possibly toxic chemicals from this stuff would do any damage there.
Since they're the Navy, they probably have regular shipments to and from Hawaii anyway where 2 extra tons of cargo isn't a big deal.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:22PM
A lot of good engineering suggestions above if pollution is not an issue, but this being the gov we can assume its gotta be EPA to hell and back.
Otherwise its just the good old thermite grenade treatment. The big red soup cans like we had in the army.
GIs being GIs the othe office workers had to be specifically told that emergency demolition meant a thermite grenade over the hard drive in the server case; the somewhat less computer savvy thought the keyboard or the CRT (this was decades ago) would be the proper spot for a thermite "just in case". No, I never got to do this or even knew anyone who got to do this or knew anyone who knew anyone etc. But in theory if the enemy overran the facility the drives need destruction.
I have seen thermite grenades going off and it probably looks worse than it is, but it looks like how you'd think a superfund site is born.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:27PM
Put the hard drives through a "chipper" first so they come out in small pieces. The smaller pieces are easier for the lava to destroy.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:56PM
Or just have 1 big 'who cares' melt?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:10PM (15 children)
Why go to an outside vendor? Just put a pile of drives under the nozzle when launching a missile/rocket. The fire for incineration comes for free...
(Score: 1) by fennec on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:30PM (1 child)
Or use them for target practice ...
But that would probably be too cost effective.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:40PM
Probably, yeah. I expect someone has a brother-in-law already lined up ready to build a destruction facility that will cost a fortune and charge six fortunes per year to handle it. Simply blowing them up wouldn't make anyone any money.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @02:42PM
Which is why the military can't do it
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:00PM (2 children)
One would seriously thing there was a simple solution like that to some people that work with lasers, missiles and rocket. I'm sure they have come chemist there that could cook up a good batch of thermite. Dig a suitable hole somewhere, toss drives in, apply termite. Hand out the smores and wait, ok they might become highly toxic smores but considering all the other horrible chemicals they probably deal with on day to day business one probably can't tell in the end.
The nozzle from a rocket should really be more then enough to turn a drive into sludge. I guess they don't want to use explosives tho since they can't be sure some little part of it is left intact and somehow the enemy spies might somehow piece that back together, no matter how far fetched that would be.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:53PM
Probably regs about the burning of trash that they can't violate
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:52PM
The solution is simple -- seriously, even hard bricks and firewood can get a kiln to 2400 F, and with insulating firebricks/fiber and gas burners, you could easily achieve any metal's melting temp (aside from tungsten) in a modern furnace or kiln: https://www.onlinemetals.com/meltpt.cfm [onlinemetals.com]
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:38PM (3 children)
There's a microSD card / mini USB key inside the mounds and mounds of equipment.
You blow up the pile / fire it with a rocket.
You now have no idea / accountability for whether that thing stayed in the pile and burned or just disappeared by blasting off somewhere.
Now you have to a) know that happened, b) see it go, c) find it and d) destroy it properly.
Guess where the Russians will be looking with a metal detector whenever they casually walk past.
Hell, a hard drive could easily launch itself intact and land in a recoverable state, let alone a little flash disk.
It's an incredibly stupid suggestion. This kind of stuff will be individually marked, recorded, checked off, tallied, witnessed, audited, etc. not just "lob it in with the rest of them". You are literally looking at someone counting, tagging and tracking each individual item, from shipment out, to entry into the facility, to the final destruction. With staff being searched in and out, any missing number being jumped upon like a lost classified storage device should be (i.e. Yes, you will bend over until we're satisfied we've found that missing item), and a complete audit trail with witnessed forms.
"Device 178548. Show me it. Check the model and serials. That tallies. Place that into furnace lot #234." Then again, as it arrived at the furnace. Then again as it goes from the furnace into the flames themselves.
Not just that, but you can be sure that there'll be a background check on everyone who even touches it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fritsd on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:58PM
Oh c'mon... I'm sure your president Trump will phone around to his friends, and one of them will have a competitive bid to make those hard drives and USB sticks disappear from the USA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:27PM (1 child)
Furnace? Ask Germany for help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @01:15AM
Too soon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:01PM (1 child)
That was my thought. Isn't this the place working on laser weaponry? That sounds ideal for the purpose. You might need to work a bit on containment, to protect against explosive delamination (of a non-rotating disk), but you'd need range security anyway.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:27PM
They were developing the directional cricket sonic weapon there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:41PM
Use this as an excuse to fire lots of rockets at the sun?
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:55PM
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday February 13 2019, @05:18AM
You greatly underestimate how hard it is to destroy something completely. Try reducing an old Nokia phone not even to ash, but to pieces smaller than 5mm. Use whatever you like and take as much time as you need.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:48PM
Give the 2 tons of waste to the IRS or HRC. It'll disappear quicker than you can say " ".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)
Burned, to ash, eh? 24/7 armed guards? That's some highly melodramatic security theater alrighty. What a waste of taxpayer money.
To wit, if the data on those hard drives and other storage is so precious, how did it all end up collected together like that? Some of that must have sat in storage for months, if not years. Plenty of time for spies to break in and make off with the data. Was it guarded 24/7 that whole time? Probably not. No doubt it was on the base, and that is considered secure. Were they erased and overwritten before going to this collection place? If not, why the f*** not? If they were, then this is merely a trash disposal problem.
And remember, these are the boys who rationalize the use of Windows as more secure than Linux in the following way: Windows is made by an American company, Microsoft, while Linux was built by a bunch of foreigners. Those foreigners might have put all kinds of backdoors, booby traps, spyware, and so forth in the code, while the American citizens who programmed Windows can be trusted.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:38PM
You forgot one extra detail : If it was such important data, then the drives/CDs must have been encrypted.
It's White Sands. They know heat and radiation well. Both destroy data, and it doesn't take a lot of either to make it impossible to recover and decrypt data.
Most high-tech solution: Ship to your friendly local accelerator, install in the beam dump [web.cern.ch]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:12PM
You must be describing Winders 3.1 which were built back in the day by the good folks of the US of A citizenry. Wintrubbles versions of late are all built by H1-B non-citizens who can hardly code their way out of a ham sandwich, but can lie on resumes and immigration forms. Why, even the CEO...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @04:07PM
There is only one way to be sure. You know, the one that involves powerful weapons sent from space.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:53PM (3 children)
If it's sensitive content, then it should be encrypted with a secure encryption scheme. In which case, just destroying the decryption key should be sufficient to make the data unrecoverable. Add physical deletion/overwriting of the encrypted data on top of it, and the method of physical destruction should not matter at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:03PM (1 child)
It's probably an official requirement dating back to the 1920's. It doesn't matter much that it doesn't make any sense.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:30PM
I agree 100%- probably a typical broad-brush application of a very old rule (destroying paper-stored data).
Seems like a huge waste. I think too many people confuse movies with reality. Wipe the drives and re-use them.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:13PM
Well, how do you know they aren't trying to destroy 2 tons of encryption keys?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:39PM
just hire a chinese state "company" and then have the whole country's media claim you were "hacked" like the OPM did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @06:51PM (1 child)
requires too many tps forms?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:16PM
Like with Hitler's body you mean? - oh wait, Godwin's Law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:53PM
that everything is classified.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:10PM
Since they're testing laser weapons, they could easily vaporize the hard drives. The problem is there wouldn't be any ash to store in a secure facility with a 24 hour armed guard until the end of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @08:35PM
I can't believe this is a new problem. Surely there must be a facility under some *other* Federal agency that meets their spec. I worked briefly for a contractor and the phrase "burn bag" for stuff that needed to be disposed was in our parlance. The bag probably wasn't under armed guard, or the facility but it seems like you could have a few uniformed personnel follow the materials to meet that part of the spec.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:42PM
Run each inventory item into a ceramic lined rod- or ball-mill operating in batch mode. Take the resultant powder and feed into a fluidised bed furnace.
Alternatively, dissolve the powder in boiling aqua regia (can be done in batch mode), and dry. The result should be almost completely fully oxidised 'ash', with the exception of most of the 'noble metals', and PTFE from cable insulation. You could treat the ash with Piranha solution to chew up any organic residues remaining.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @01:43AM (1 child)
Feed it to goats. Keep it in field of poison ivy to attract goats and keep away "russians".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @01:47AM
-Old soviet trick.