Why the latest government hack is worse than the Snowden affair

Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Katherine Archuleta testifies on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. (Cliff Owen/Associated Press

When you read about the recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), in which China is thought to have filched millions of security clearance application forms, you might have shrugged your shoulders. Just another hack, right? No big deal, right? Wrong. This cyber burglary is an even greater intelligence catastrophe than the Edward Snowden affair. And our negligent leaders, bureaucracies and their contractors need to be held responsible.

When I applied for my security clearance in 2010, as I was preparing to work with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan as a social scientist, I filled out a long form called an SF-86. Practically everyone with a federal government security clearance knows this document. It takes a lot of time to complete and requires in-depth disclosures of a very personal nature. My SF-86 contains my Social Security number, information about my credit history, my job history (including a dispute with a past employer), contact information for my closest friends and family in the United States and abroad, all non-Americans with whom I am close, a list of every foreign official I ever met, every place I lived and people who could verify that I lived there, and much more. If I had ever been arrested or had any history of drug abuse, I would have had to report that, too.

So you can understand my frustration when I discovered that China had likely hacked the OPM and two of its contractors and made off with at least 4 million SF-86s on former, current and prospective U.S. government workers.

Beyond narrow concerns about identity theft, think about the national security implications.

Via: Washington Post

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Former Top Counterintel Official: Hack 'Tells the Chinese the Identities of Almost Everybody Who Has Got a U.S. Security Clearance'

FILE - In this June 5, 2015, file photo, a gate leading to the Homeland Security Department headquarters in northwest Washington. Hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for every federal employee, a government worker union said Thursday, June 11, 2015, charging that the cyberattack on U.S. employee data is far worse than the Obama administration has acknowledged. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deeply personal information submitted by U.S. intelligence and military personnel for security clearances — mental illnesses, drug and alcohol use, past arrests, bankruptcies and more — is in the hands of hackers linked to China, officials say.

In describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged, authorities point to Standard Form 86, which applicants are required to complete. Applicants also must list contacts and relatives, potentially exposing any foreign relatives of U.S. intelligence employees to coercion. Both the applicant's Social Security number and that of his or her cohabitant are required.

In a statement, the White House said that on June 8, investigators concluded there was "a high degree of confidence that ... systems containing information related to the background investigations of current, former and prospective federal government employees, and those for whom a federal background investigation was conducted, may have been exfiltrated."

"This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance," said Joel Brenner, a former top U.S. counterintelligence official. "That makes it very hard for any of those people to function as an intelligence officer. The database also tells the Chinese an enormous amount of information about almost everyone with a security clearance. That's a gold mine. It helps you approach and recruit spies."

The Office of Personnel Management, which was the target of the hack, did not respond to requests for comment. OPM spokesman Samuel Schumach and Jackie Koszczuk, the director of communications, have consistently said there was no evidence that security clearance information had been compromised.

Via: CNS News

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Chinese State Media Warns Of ‘Inevitable’ War With US Photo

Despite stringent warnings from the United States not to proceed with an aggressive naval strategy, on Tuesday, China unveiled plans to build two lighthouses in the South China Sea.

At the same time, an oped published in the state-run Global Times stated that unless Washington backs down, conflict may be ‘inevitable.’

China’s State Council also issued a whitepaper saying that it will expand military capabilities in the region to include offensive measures, in addition to already existing defensive measures, Reuters reports.  China’s Second Artillery Corps intends to bolster its ability for nuclear counterattacks and long-range precision strikes.

Yet the paper also promised that “China will never seek hegemony or expansion.

Via: The Daily Caller

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