[Infowarrior] - Air Force One data removed from Web

[Richard Forno]

(note that it took THREE DAYS to remove this stuff from the web....
³e-enabled military² is starting to sound like an oxymoron....and ³password
protecting it² on a website makes me feel much safer, too....rf)

(see also: http://cryptome.org/af1-rescue.htm)

Air Force One data removed from Web
Site revealed details of security measures on president's jets
- Paul J. Caffera, Special to The Chronicle
Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Air Force and Pentagon officials scrambled Monday to remove highly sensitive
security details about the two Air Force One jetliners after The Chronicle
reported that the information had been posted on a public Web site.

The security information -- contained in a "technical order" -- is used by
rescue crews in the event of an emergency aboard various Air Force planes.
But this order included details about Air Force One's anti-missile systems,
the location of Secret Service personnel within the aircraft and information
on other vulnerabilities that terrorists or a hostile military force could
exploit to try to damage or destroy Air Force One, the president's air
carrier.

"We are dealing with literally hundreds of thousands of Web pages, and Web
pages are reviewed on a regular basis, but every once in a while something
falls through the cracks," Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Catherine Reardon
told The Chronicle.

"We can't even justify how (the technical order) got out there. It should
have been password-protected. We regret it happened. We removed it, and we
will look more closely in the future."

The technical order first came to light Saturday when The Chronicle revealed
its existence -- but not any of its sensitive details. The Chronicle
purposely withheld publishing the Web site and certain information about
anti-missile capabilities from the order that could have compromised
security of the two Air Force One jetliners.

The Chronicle also took extensive steps to alert the government to the
order's availability on the Internet. Immediately after discovering the
document, The Chronicle notified military and federal authorities about its
existence. Nonetheless, a week after they were initially notified, neither
the Secret Service nor Air Force officials at Andrews Air Force Base, the
home of Air Force One, had caused the document to be removed.

Before publishing Saturday's story, The Chronicle again contacted Andrews
Air Force Base and provided officials with the Web address for the document.
The Chronicle also offered to provide the address to the White House. White
House press spokeswoman Jeanne Mamo, when notified on Friday, said she was
satisfied that Andrews officials had already been told by The Chronicle of
the site's existence.

The technical order remained on the Web until Monday afternoon.

"The order came down this afternoon to remove this particular technical
order from the public Web site," said John Birdsong, chief of media
relations at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, the air base in Georgia
that had originally posted the order on its publicly accessible Web site

According to Birdsong, the directive to remove the document came from a
number of officials, including Dan McGarvey, the chief of information
security for the Air Force at the Pentagon.

Saturday's article "got the attention of the highest level in this
building," a Pentagon official told The Chronicle on the condition that the
person not be named.

The article also got the attention of the White House press corps. At a
daily briefing on Monday, Scott McClellan, President Bush's spokesman, was
asked about The Chronicle article and if the administration was aware that
potentially compromising information was available on the Internet.

"I'm not going to talk about security measures," McClellan said.

Reardon blamed the failure to act sooner on a general failure to appreciate
the significance of the information. Officials at Andrews Air Force Base and
the White House Military Office "missed the bigger picture (and) failed to
raise the document to a higher level," she said. "They saw that the document
was not classified and thought they could not do anything about it."

Remarkably, the Pentagon official who requested anonymity said the reason
for the document's existence in the public domain in the first place was
thrift. Putting the order on the Internet, "was viewed (by someone) as a
cost-effective method of making the information available," the official
noted, "but it compromised information not only about Air Force One. ... It
had information about our entire fleet."

Jean Schaefer, deputy chief of public affairs for the secretary of the Air
Force, said the services need to be more mindful of their own rules.

"We have very clear policies of what should be on the Web," she said. "We
need to emphasize the policy to the field.

"It appears that this document shouldn't have been on the Web, and we have
pulled the document in question," said Schaefer. "Our policy is clear in
that documents that could make our operations vulnerable or threaten the
safety of our people should not be available on the Web."

The revelation of the anti-missile defenses on Air Force One, and other
high-value aircraft, comes just weeks after the Pentagon notified Congress
that obtaining funding for the installation of missile countermeasures on
aircraft used by the secretary of state and other top officials was a high
priority.

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