NASA Contractor Arrested for Espionage. NTRS taken Offline

[ChileVerde]

If classified document somehow becomes public, it stops being classified at that moment.

<OT>
Not here in the US it doesn't. There have been any number of instances (c.f. Wikileaks) where the US government has adamantly insisted that public disclosure or knowledge of classified information is irrelevant to its continued classification.  US courts have, at the 99.9% level, upheld that position.  The information may not be secret in the sense of being unknown to uncleared people, but it certainly continues to be classified.
</OT>

[Robotbeat]

If classified document somehow becomes public, it stops being classified at that moment.

<OT>
Not here in the US it doesn't. There have been any number of instances (c.f. Wikileaks) where the US government has adamantly insisted that public disclosure or knowledge of classified information is irrelevant to its continued classification.  US courts have, at the 99.9% level, upheld that position.  The information may not be secret in the sense of being unknown to uncleared people, but it certainly continues to be classified.
</OT>

This is pernicious to the Freedom of Speech and the Press.

[A_M_Swallow]

What is the point in taking server down? Even if there is some ITAR-protected stuff, it's already there and have to be presumed compromised and so non protected anymore. You just can't "undo" making something public. That's information security 101. If classified document somehow becomes public, it stops being classified at that moment.

A description of what happens when real defence classified information escapes to the press.  From the website of the organisation that operates Britain's DN Notice System.

"
Information Considered by the DPBAC to be Widely Available in the Public Domain

The extent of the public availability and accessibility of specific, potentially sensitive, information is a factor of key importance in the operation of the Defence Advisory (DA) Notice System. It is fundamental when providing advice to the UK media on whether the repeating of certain information could inadvertently damage national security. Rapid developments in worldwide information collection, storage and dissemination, particularly those related to the internet, have brought about major changes in the public availability and accessibility of all types of information. They have also raised the possibility of very different interpretations of the term ‘widely available’. At one extreme, information may be obtained from a very wide variety of sources, each of which is easily accessible to the general public. At the other, while information may exist somewhere on the internet, it may be limited to a single source and be capable of being found only after prodigious effort and ingenuity. Between these two extremes, a range of potentially valid interpretations of ‘widely available’ exists.

In clarifying what it understands by this term, the DPBAC has decided that DA Notice advice will take into account prior publication or broadcast by major newspapers, broadcast networks and high-profile magazines, prior distribution by internationally networked news, picture and television agencies, and prominence on major internet search engines or widely-used webcast channels. When providing DA Notice advice, it will continue to be for the Committee’s Secretary to apply this understanding in each case in which some form of prior publication or broadcast is involved.

The DPBAC fully recognises that world-wide information collection, storage and dissemination are continuing to evolve rapidly. In cases where the rebroadcast or republication of certain information could inadvertently damage national security, the DPBAC is committed to ensuring that the advice it provides to the UK media continues to be in harmony with changing realities.
"

http://www.dnotice.org.uk/index.htm

[Ben the Space Brit]

As with all panicked, ill-considered and ultimately useless and/or disastrous politically-motivated acts, the thought process goes something like this:

1) Something is wrong;
2) Something must me done;
3) This (the first thing that enters their heads) is something;
Ergo:
4) This must be done.

Anyone who quibbles is, of course, a traitor or an enabler. 

[jcm]

Here is a list of and a story about the folks who did the hard work needed to create NASA's Technical Report Server (may she rest in peace).   
 
Every document ever linked by NTRS was long ago downloaded by Beijing's automatic search engines.  (I've watched them meticulously download every bit of my web site several times a day for months.)  Shutting NTRS down now is        so         profoundly         stupid.

 - Ed Kyle

I hope so - maybe the Chinese can be persuaded to put up an NTRS mirror so we can use it again? :-)

I agree that the whole thing is profoundly stupid. If ITAR were sufficiently narrowly scoped that it did actually apply just to things that really would hurt US security, that would be one thing (still arguable), but in practice it seems to be applied with such a broad brush on things that are clearly NOT sensitive that most technical people I've talked to have little respect for it as a process, which leads naturally to violations.
 

[00rs250]

I hope so - maybe the Chinese can be persuaded to put up an NTRS mirror so we can use it again? :-)

I was wondering if anyone else has mirrored the site (besides China)?  I read somewhere NASA wanted people to or encouraged it.  Nothing like waiting for those black vehicles to roll up if you were to place a copy of it backup on the web, if you were located in the U.S.A.

[iamlucky13]

Congressman Wolf is on the committee responsible for NASA oversight. He is doing his job. Isn't he also having the head of Ames investigated by the FBI ?

Investigating whether NASA Langley's hiring practices are appropriate is good. Investigating whether stuff is getting reviewed properly before it goes on NTRS is good.

Shutting down NTRS after papers are already public is questionable at best. I hope this will be a short outage, but in the meantime, a huge trove of useful and legitimately public information is offline in response to espionage completely unrelated to that repository.

And to arguably no effect. As someone else said, they shut the gate after the horse left the stable.

If classified document somehow becomes public, it stops being classified at that moment.

<OT>
Not here in the US it doesn't. There have been any number of instances (c.f. Wikileaks) where the US government has adamantly insisted that public disclosure or knowledge of classified information is irrelevant to its continued classification.  US courts have, at the 99.9% level, upheld that position.  The information may not be secret in the sense of being unknown to uncleared people, but it certainly continues to be classified.
</OT>

That is correct. In general I agree with that position. The fact that classified information has been compromised once does not mean it's ok to compromise it further. Wikileaks is a pretty good example, because even when Wikileaks gained classified info, there were still lots of people who did not and should not have that info. When they posted the info openly, however, others probably did get it.

But in this case we're not really talking about stopping the circulation classified documents. We're talking about stopping the circulation of unclassified documents.

Rep. Wolf implicitly suggests there might be classified documents on NTRS, but has not even directly claimed, much less substantiated the suggestion, nor indicated any evidence exists linking Bo Jiang and NTRS.

To carry the theory out to an obvious absurdity, why stop at shutting down NTRS? Why not seek search warrants and restraining orders prohibiting the use of electronic communications for every person who has ever accessed NTRS? We might also have unwittingly come into possession of classified documents, and until the status of every document in our possession is checked, does not the same presumption of imminent compromise apply?

[iamlucky13]

Related question:

NTRS is not accessible to the public, but can NASA employees, university researchers, and others with good reasons to need files from NTRS still get them? Is there a process for them to request and receive specific files?

It's not classified, so I would think there's no specific criteria for who is allowed to see what or how to request it.

[Robotbeat]

I hope so - maybe the Chinese can be persuaded to put up an NTRS mirror so we can use it again? :-)

Of course when I searched for "NTRS Mirror" I came up with ....

"Hybrid Electrostatic/Flextensional Mirror for Lightweight, Large ...
ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20130009454"  etc., followed by
"Until further notice, the NTRS system will be unavailable for public access."

If needed, I would happily contribute every kilobit of every downloaded NTRS file on my drive to help recreate at least a fraction of the information.  We would need a few tens of thousands more to share similarly, I suppose, and a place to put it all.

 - Ed Kyle

Yeah, worth pointing out that NTRS is partially mirrored on Google... (Click "Quick View")

[simonbp]

Guys, I *distinctly* remember seeing a "changes are coming, get ready for the new NTRS" type message posted last week. Occam's Razor is that they are just updating the website, nothing sinister.

Is there any actual evidence of any connection to an espionage case, or was the original post just total speculation?

[Robotbeat]

Guys, I *distinctly* remember seeing a "changes are coming, get ready for the new NTRS" type message posted last week. Occam's Razor is that they are just updating the website, nothing sinister.

Is there any actual evidence of any connection to an espionage case, or was the original post just total speculation?

Yes there is. Have you even read this thread? Wolf said he was going to ask for NASA's reports to be taken down from public view until they could be gone through. Then we find out that NTRS has been taken down from /public/ view (not necessarily internal).

He asked for it to be taken down, then it goes down. But that's just speculation?

[Jester]

Until further notice,
the NTRS system will be unavailable for public access.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and anticipate
that this site will return to service in the near future.

settle down....breathe....

Yes it sucks it's down now, but at least the message above indicates that it should be back

[Galactic Penguin SST]

Guys, I *distinctly* remember seeing a "changes are coming, get ready for the new NTRS" type message posted last week. Occam's Razor is that they are just updating the website, nothing sinister.

Is there any actual evidence of any connection to an espionage case, or was the original post just total speculation?

Well Keith Cowing of NASA Watch did contact the NASA HQ PAO, which said that "It's down for review to ensure there is no sensitive content on the server." 

[iamlucky13]

Guys, I *distinctly* remember seeing a "changes are coming, get ready for the new NTRS" type message posted last week. Occam's Razor is that they are just updating the website, nothing sinister.

Is there any actual evidence of any connection to an espionage case, or was the original post just total speculation?

You probably saw it right here on the front page:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/

It says nothing about a multi-day outage. Generally upgrades to heavily used servers are done at non-peak hours and planned well ahead of time to minimize the time required, with fallback plans pre-arranged so if something goes wrong, you can easily revert to the old system. And anybody with a lick of sense posts a specific message ahead of time with the scheduled date and time, and a message during the upgrade explaining why the site is down.

I last accessed NTRS on Friday, if I remember right. There were no specific notices.

That does not preclude this is a coincidence, but since Rep. Wolf demanded all technical data resources be taken offline, and NTRS immediately went down for multiple days so far, the simplest answer I see is not that they ran into unusually difficult problems upgrading NTRS, can't revert to the old system, and can't even post a brief explanation of why the site is down, but that they did what Rep. Wolf demanded they do.

[manboy]

I hope so - maybe the Chinese can be persuaded to put up an NTRS mirror so we can use it again? :-)

I was wondering if anyone else has mirrored the site (besides China)?  I read somewhere NASA wanted people to or encouraged it.  Nothing like waiting for those black vehicles to roll up if you were to place a copy of it backup on the web, if you were located in the U.S.A.

You may be able to find some of the files on archive.org.

[IRobot]

Guys, I'm from a crappy country (in terms of economy) and I clearly remember that a Portuguese company close to my home caught a couple of Chinese spies per year!  That was 15 years ago and they manufacture very large transformers, not rockets! I just wonder how many got what they want.

[smith5se]

Adding this to cause more "ZOMG, run around panic" LOL

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/20/nasa-locks-out-foreigners-following-spy-allegations/?test=latestnews

You all crack me up sometimes...

[ChileVerde]

Guys, I'm from a crappy country (in terms of economy) and I clearly remember that a Portuguese company close to my home caught a couple of Chinese spies per year!  That was 15 years ago and they manufacture very large transformers, not rockets! I just wonder how many got what they want.

I don't think there's any question that China, like the USSR before it, is heavily into industrial espionage.  The question is whether measures taken against that espionage do more harm than good -- hence the present discussion.  Probably there's some optimum level where the defense should be set, but I don't see much effort going into determining where that level should be.

[Robotbeat]

Security is good. Security theatre isn't.

[Ronsmytheiii]

How is this so bad?  So NTRS is down for awhile, probably after a good review that will inevitably fix issues and probably even overhaul the interface for a better experience.  Rep Wolf only wanted a review, it is not going away forever and it seems like a reasonable request.