So that's how Carl gets out.

/dammit, Lori, close the farking window!

Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

In another news you can now see puffs of air. I see the wind!

Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

Walker: Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

In another news you can now see puffs of air. I see the wind!

Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

Did you see Red? At one point, Bruce Willis circumvents a vault door by kicking the drywall.

That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

Because facilities management people are in the same career path as janitors.

Not the brightest people.

Oh good.

Walker: Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

In another news you can now see puffs of air. I see the wind!

Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

I can personally vouch that areas of national security can have some very strange combinations of lax and strict security. It's frankly baffling.

GAT_00: I can personally vouch that areas of national security can have some very strange combinations of lax and strict security. It's frankly baffling.

Not all that confusing. Usually it involves a mix of "looks good on paper, but doesn't actually work" and "common sense? What's that?".

vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

RedPhoenix122: GAT_00: I can personally vouch that areas of national security can have some very strange combinations of lax and strict security. It's frankly baffling.

Not all that confusing. Usually it involves a mix of "looks good on paper, but doesn't actually work" and "common sense? What's that?".

It's not that, it's that there are areas of what I feel are surprisingly lax security along side what I feel is properly strict security. Obviously, that is just my impression rather than what is needed.

I have to pass through a bio-mechanical hand scanner to get to my workstation and carry an electronic door card; yet there is almost no online restrictions, media or data checks. I could carry entire databases of info out if I chose or simply upload it to my home server.

The ones responsible for data security are the ones least able to understand electronic data.

doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

But, you have to use the door. IT'S THE RULES!!

Walker: ]Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

Enough to generate the 1.21 Gigawatts required?

Isn't this how "The Stand" started? ._.'

RedPhoenix122: vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

But, you have to use the door. IT'S THE RULES!!

The worst thing is that they kept pounding us about the consequences of security violations during security inspections would result in new restrictive rules. Mind you, the new rules usually didn't help ensure the violation in question didn't happen again. Like, leave a classified document in the john? New rule: you have to flash your badge before going to the gym. Not real examples, but you get the idea.

Then one year, we had a spotless, flawless inspection.

We got new rules anyway, pretty much destroying incentives to be hyper-vigilant.

"At no time during recent incidents featured in the media were CDC workers or the public in harm's way," agency spokesman Tom Skinner said.




CNN recommends: Deadly bird flu could become airborne

Why would CNN recommend such a thing??

You see, there was a goof. Somebody made a mistake with a box. Somebody else forgot to pull a switch that would have sealed off the base. The lag was only forty-some seconds, but it was enough. The box is known in the trade as a "sniffer." It's made in Portland, Oregon, Defense Department Contract 164480966. The boxes are put together in separate circuits by female technicians, and they do it that way so none of them really know what they're doing. One of them was maybe thinking about what to make for supper, and whoever was supposed to check her work was maybe thinking about trading the family car. Anyway, Cindy, the last coincidence was that a man at the Number Four security post, a man named Campion, saw the numbers go red just in time to get out of the room before the doors shut and mag-locked. Then he got his family and ran. He drove through the main gate just four minutes before the sirens started going off and we sealed the whole base. And no one started looking for him until nearly an hour later because there are no monitors in the security posts - somewhere along the line you have to stop guarding the guardians or everyone in the world would be a goddam turnkey - and everybody just assumed he was in there, waiting for the sniffers to sort out the clean areas from the dirty ones. So he got him some running room and he was smart enough to use the ranch trails and lucky enough not to pick any of the ones where his car could get bogged down. Then someone had to make a command decision on whether or not to bring in the State Police, the FBI, or both of them and that fabled buck got passed hither, thither, and yon, and by the time someone decided the Shop ought to handle it, this happy asshole - this happy diseased asshole - had gotten to Texas, and when they finally caught him he wasn't running anymore because he and his wife and his baby daughter were all laid out on cooling boards in some pissant little town called Braintree. Braintree, Texas. Anyway, Cindy, what I'm trying to say is that this was a chain of coincidence on the order of winning the Irish Sweepstakes. With a little incompetence thrown in for good luck - for bad luck, I mean, please excuse me - but mostly it was just a thing that happened.

Do you think the window might have been left open?


Ohhh yaaah I suppose!

bigstoopidbruce: You see, there was a goof.

Ya, Capt. Tripps? Bring it! I really don't want to go to work on Monday.
Moving to Boulder, who's with me?
/fark Vegas, we all know what happened to them.

vygramul: RedPhoenix122: vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

But, you have to use the door. IT'S THE RULES!!

The worst thing is that they kept pounding us about the consequences of security violations during security inspections would result in new restrictive rules. Mind you, the new rules usually didn't help ensure the violation in question didn't happen again. Like, leave a classified document in the john? New rule: you have to flash your badge before going to the gym. Not real examples, but you get the idea.

Then one year, we had a spotless, flawless inspection.

We got new rules anyway, pretty much destroying incentives to be hyper-vigilant.

Of course you did. The people that invent rules have to justify their existence and spend up their budget, same as everybody else.

vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.


A local bank did something like this, they redesigned their teller booths with bulletproof glass, 2 stage drawers to pass through items, telephone style headsets for talking with customers, but all of this was mounted on top of the original teller desks which were waist high and made of 2x4s and quarter inch paneling.....

Maybe I'm missing something, somewhere but why the hell does a CDC germ lab even have windows that can open?

Walker: Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

It's hard to beat the fact that the secret code for arming nuclear missiles was 00000000 because someone thought it would take too long to deal with real codes when we were attacked.

GAT_00: Walker: Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

In another news you can now see puffs of air. I see the wind!

Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

I can personally vouch that areas of national security can have some very strange combinations of lax and strict security. It's frankly baffling.

If one were to steal plutonium what would be done with it? Craigslist? Ebay?

Nem Wan: Walker: Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

It's hard to beat the fact that the secret code for arming nuclear missiles was 00000000 because someone thought it would take too long to deal with real codes when we were attacked.

Lovely.

Fortunately no one was inside doing experiments to make sure dangerous viruses like the Bird flu can become airborne and virulent in other species.
Because that would have been comically tragic, what with people on vacation touring the facility right before their flights back home... through our nations airports... and what not.

calbert: [farm7.staticflickr.com image 481x360]

[farm7.staticflickr.com image 481x357]

[farm7.staticflickr.com image 480x356]

[farm8.staticflickr.com image 480x359]

[farm8.staticflickr.com image 482x360]

[farm8.staticflickr.com image 480x359]

[farm8.staticflickr.com image 477x357]

Excellent.

AbbeySomeone: If one were to steal plutonium what would be done with it? Craigslist? Ebay?

Ya know, I've always wondered how the international arms markets worked, but I've never bothered to dig too deep lest I become the assignment of some field operative for disposal.

AbbeySomeone:
If one were to steal plutonium what would be done with it? Craigslist? Ebay?

That article said nothing about someone leaving a window open.

GAT_00: Walker: Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

In another news you can now see puffs of air. I see the wind!

Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

I can personally vouch that areas of national security can have some very strange combinations of lax and strict security. It's frankly baffling.


I was at a DHS building in downtown DC a few weeks ago. As I was pulling in to the public parking lot under the building a big lady in a security uniform with long fingernails was like, "'Es-cuse me sur, can I see yo eye dee?" So I'm like, "Ummmmm OK," and open my wallet to show her my drivers license.

"Oh no sur, please take it out of yo wallet. I needs to sees it." So, I take it out of my wallet, hand it to her, she looks at it for just long enough to technically say she looked at it and hands it back. "Have you a nice day sur, just go on to the next booth."

Honestly she herself was quite pleasant, but the whole thing made no sense. Security involved her looking at my ID. Not checking it against a list, not examining it in any way whatsoever... just... looking at it for an instant... I was driving my car in to the building and they didn't check my car at all, so it could easily have been hiding a bomb, my ID could have been fake, I could have been a known terrorist... etc.. The "security" served no purpose whatsoever.

And inside the building the "guards" were all just horsing around the whole time. They'd check a few people here and there - which consisted of the same kind of useless "ID check" I'd gone through outside... but if you just kept walking and ignored them they would just let you go.

It was almost like the security wasn't even there for show, it's like it was there as a JOKE.

HotWingAgenda: That article said nothing about someone leaving a window open.

[Welcome_to_fark.Jpg]?

/Every time I click a headline, I'm secretly hoping its about lesbians.

The window has nothing to do with the breach. Those labs are designed to be under negative pressure compared to the hallway, otherwise you'd get a big puff of potentially germy air into the hall every time someone opened the door.
So having a window slit open should only allow air to flow from the hall into the lab.
The real problem would be deeper in the facility system, which put the lab are a higher pressure than the hallway.

vygramul: RedPhoenix122: vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

But, you have to use the door. IT'S THE RULES!!

The worst thing is that they kept pounding us about the consequences of security violations during security inspections would result in new restrictive rules. Mind you, the new rules usually didn't help ensure the violation in question didn't happen again. Like, leave a classified document in the john? New rule: you have to flash your badge before going to the gym. Not real examples, but you get the idea.

Then one year, we had a spotless, flawless inspection.

We got new rules anyway, pretty much destroying incentives to be hyper-vigilant.

I'm sorry, but anyone installing security as a punishment deserves to be fired on the spot. There is no faster way than that to instill the opinion that the security is unimportant and should be ignored whenever one can get away with it.

Also, it's rendering the other security checks completly meaningless, because the checkers will mistakenly believe they're there to waste the appropriate amount of time, rather than provide any actual security, including the occasional psycopath who will diliberatly bog everyone down for the thrill of it, further reducing employees' respect for the security.

This is how you get an environment where everyone's password is "qwerty", because they have to enter it five hundred+ times a day for no good reason.

Here's my security fail true story. My employer has three floors of the building where I work. On evenings and weekends, to take the elevator to those floors, you have to punch in a coded sequence of the elevator floor numbers before you can select a floor.

Or, you can take the elevator to the floor adjacent to our offices, and then take the fire stairs into our offices.

Hey, mistakes happen. Like how only one other person in this thread pointed out the problem wasn't an open window, but a backwards airflow out of a cleanroom which was detected because if how it was blowing on an open door window. Not even a window to the outside, but on a lab door.

The leak occurred on February 16, when air flowed the wrong way out of a germ lab into a clean-air corridor, rather than through the powerful HEPA filter that cleans the air, congressional sources and CDC officials said. Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.

Come on people, RTFA. It's still a big deal, but don't get the facts wrong and cause a panic.

Sim Tree: vygramul: RedPhoenix122: vygramul: doglover: vygramul: That has ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

When?

Well, not at the CIA, but at a secure facility, that had just upgraded its server room door to something like a vault door despite the wall around it being drywall. One of the analysts want up to the door and kicked a hole in the drywall to demonstrate the stupidity of the system.

But, you have to use the door. IT'S THE RULES!!

The worst thing is that they kept pounding us about the consequences of security violations during security inspections would result in new restrictive rules. Mind you, the new rules usually didn't help ensure the violation in question didn't happen again. Like, leave a classified document in the john? New rule: you have to flash your badge before going to the gym. Not real examples, but you get the idea.

Then one year, we had a spotless, flawless inspection.

We got new rules anyway, pretty much destroying incentives to be hyper-vigilant.

I'm sorry, but anyone installing security as a punishment deserves to be fired on the spot. There is no faster way than that to instill the opinion that the security is unimportant and should be ignored whenever one can get away with it.

Also, it's rendering the other security checks completly meaningless, because the checkers will mistakenly believe they're there to waste the appropriate amount of time, rather than provide any actual security, including the occasional psycopath who will diliberatly bog everyone down for the thrill of it, further reducing employees' respect for the security.

This is how you get an environment where everyone's password is "qwerty", because they have to enter it five hundred+ times a day for no good reason.

I'll bet the guy who kicked the hole in the wall was fired for destruction of company property.

Sim Tree: This is how you get an environment where everyone's password is "qwerty", because they have to enter it five hundred+ times a day for no good reason.

So much THIS. When I was working at Hollywood Video, the register computers would require you to enter your account password after 30-60 seconds of inactivity. For further security, the passwords had to be a certain number of characters. Result: Everyone made their password a single key, held down until the maximum number of characters. When we had to change them every month or so, 111111111111 would become 2222222222, then 33333333333. Every single employee did this, and the store managers outright taught us to do it. We also learned that if you pressed the key to enter a customer's account number manually, it would count as "active", and would never roll over. The annoyance of the security efforts actively made the system LESS secure, and people being people, I doubt employees at "secure facilities" are any better.

Last Man on Earth: So much THIS. When I was working at Hollywood Video, the register computers would require you to enter your account password after

proximity detectors for personal RFIDs is the proper 21 cfr 11 approach.

Nem Wan: Walker: Also a few years back they found out that at the Los Alamos National Lab security was pretty lax. After 2.2 pounds of plutonium went missing they found out that the "secret codes" to get in the doors of secure areas were posted on the doors themselves. Security fail.

It's hard to beat the fact that the secret code for arming nuclear missiles was 00000000 because someone thought it would take too long to deal with real codes when we were attacked.



Jesus Christ, that is just... babytown frolics.

utah dude: Last Man on Earth: So much THIS. When I was working at Hollywood Video, the register computers would require you to enter your account password after

proximity detectors for personal RFIDs is the proper 21 cfr 11 approach.


I've seen a neck lanyard/badge with a barcode printed on it. When you go to check someone out, you check yourself out first, which enters the password automatically.

I would say passwords are better when you don't have physical control over the premises, such as a remote login. But if you've got a security camera trained on it, and every transaction can be reversed in the credential theft discovery time, a password sort of becomes unnecessary. If someone steals your card, void it, and arrest anyone who has been using it. If you can't get good odds on getting away with it, it doesn't happen as often as you might think. 20/80 rule and all that.

Someone, please, tell me that the Republicans aren't about to use this incident as an excuse to "reduce the deficit" by shutting down the CDC.

It is amusing how the submitter can so confidently paint someone else as completely idiotic when s/he is simply ignorant about what happened.

Like frankmanhog and Nebulious mentioned, airflow in these laboratories are controlled by pressure. Positive pressure (more pressure inside the room than outside) would prevent contamination of delicate samples, while negative pressure (less pressure inside than outside) serves as containment to prevent escape of microorganisms from the room.

Furthermore, for a "sophisticated" biosafety level 3 lab studying multiple pathogens, I assume that there is a suite layout, with multiple small labs joined by a corridor which itself leads from an entry room/decontamination area. There would be, in effect, three areas with an increasing pressure gradient from the lab to the entry room. Positive pressure in that entry room doesn't necessarily mean that the working labs themselves were not at negative pressure.

12th_nightmare: Maybe I'm missing something, somewhere but why the hell does a CDC germ lab even have windows that can open?

You aren't, subby mislead with the headline.