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posted by takyon on Friday July 10 2015, @09:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the china-liberated-data dept.

According to The Washington Post:

The massive hack last year of the Office of Personnel Management's system containing security clearance information affected 21.5 million people, including current and former employees, contractors and their families and friends, officials said Thursday.

That is in addition to a separate hack – also last year — of OPM's personnel database that affected 4.2 million people. That number was previously announced.

Together, the breaches arguably comprise the most consequential cyber intrusion in U.S. government history. Administration officials have privately said they were traced to the Chinese government and appear to be for purposes of traditional espionage.

Update: Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta finally resigned mid-Friday.


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Friday July 10 2015, @10:27PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday July 10 2015, @10:27PM (#207671)

    If my math is correct, this would mean that approximately 1 out of every 15 Americans either has a security clearance or is closely associated with somebody who does. That's a huge amount of resources to put towards a national security state, a lot more than we put towards, say, growing food.

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  • (Score: 2) by tynin on Friday July 10 2015, @10:37PM

    by tynin (2013) on Friday July 10 2015, @10:37PM (#207677) Journal

    Former employees could mean 100+ years of people who have had a security clearance, not just those actively in a position to need it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @10:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @10:52PM (#207681)

      Shush you. He gets to feed his "national security state" narrative and that makes him feel "insightful."

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 10 2015, @11:01PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday July 10 2015, @11:01PM (#207685) Homepage

        The overclassification of information is a big fucking problem nowadays. And unless you're a Snowden or breaking the rules on the down-low, the increase in pay and job security are powerful motivators in being a good little bootlicker, especially if you have a family.

    • (Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:07AM

      by captain normal (2205) on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:07AM (#208062)

      If you'd RTFA, you'd have seen "...every file associated with an OPM-managed security clearance application since 2000 "
      Glad my security clearance was processed back in the early '60s. Stopped working on anything that would require such by 1966.

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @11:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 10 2015, @11:33PM (#207693)

    Roughly 5 million people or about 1.5% of the population holds an active security clearance. [washingtonpost.com] We are at record levels not seen since the cold war. The difference is back then we were fighting organizations with significant espionage capabilities. Now we fight people living in mud huts. So obviously the need for secrecy is much greater.

    As you noted there are the close associates too -- so two parents, any siblings and spouse or anyone living together. 5M x 4 and you get pretty close to that 21.5M number.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by kc on Friday July 10 2015, @11:57PM

    by kc (5066) on Friday July 10 2015, @11:57PM (#207701)

    OPM does investigations on all (or nearly all?) Federal employees and contractors, even those that don't need a "security clearance". It looks like this data includes all of those records. For example, see https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/ [opm.gov] . It does not say that only records of people with security clearance were compromised.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:02AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:02AM (#207704)

    30+ years ago when I got my clearance the NSA (then known as No Such Agency) interviewed the neighbors of my childhood home, my current neighbors, and anybody I listed as a friend or who connected to a friend. Of course, they didn't tell me they'd be doing this (pre internet yadda yadda). When I changed jobs I refused to get another clearance, having the FBI interview my childhood friend's parents pissed me off.

    What really got me is that due to stupid marketing mistakes my company decreed that when a marketing person talked technical with a potential customer an engineer had to be present. I'd sit there with my security clearance keeping my mouth shut while the marketing droid with no clearance would talk classified stuff with the customer.

    Stupid marketing mistakes? 3 times in 6 months 3 different sales reps sold things to customers that would have required a ground up redesign of our system. To be fair this was the early 80's and not many people understood the new digital world.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:28AM (#207714)

      So you worked for the NSA?

      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday July 11 2015, @05:49PM

        by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday July 11 2015, @05:49PM (#207947)

        No, I worked on telemetry for nuclear missiles.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 12 2015, @04:02PM (#208160)

          > No, I worked on telemetry for nuclear missiles.

          Then the NSA didn't do your investigation. Before all investigations were consolidated under DISCO, each agency handled their own.

          • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday July 13 2015, @02:03PM

            by Snotnose (1623) on Monday July 13 2015, @02:03PM (#208490)

            The clearance came from the NSA. People who told me they got interviews told me the agents identified themselves as FBI. I don't remember who the guys who interviewed me worked for. My sticking point was I smoked pot in high school, but quit when I was 20 or so.

            --
            Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by JeanCroix on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:23AM

    by JeanCroix (573) on Saturday July 11 2015, @12:23AM (#207713)
    My guess is that current and former clearance holders, as well as their immediate families could certainly comprise a number this large. I'm contemplating letting my ex-wife know that Chinese intelligence has her stuff.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cyrano on Saturday July 11 2015, @01:32AM

    by cyrano (1034) on Saturday July 11 2015, @01:32AM (#207727) Homepage

    If my math is correct, this would mean that approximately 1 out of every 15 Americans either has a security clearance or is closely associated with somebody who does. That's a huge amount of resources to put towards a national security state, a lot more than we put towards, say, growing food.

    Bingo!

    It's closer to 1 in 13, if Wikipedia is right about the current population of the USA: 321,163,157.

    And that's about the same number as the former GDR...

    16,111,000 in 1990. About 1.2 million of those worked for the government, if we include around 400,000 government "representatives" in factories and other workplaces.

    And that is not even counting most of the police and military, I presume?

    --
    The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]