Wednesday, October 22, 2014

DAM IT

I don't know what to make of this story.
 A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employee in Ohio has been charged with stealing sensitive information from a federal database for the nation's dams and lying about the breach to federal agents, prosecutors said.
Xiafen "Sherry" Chen, 59, was arrested on Monday at the NOAA office in Wilmington, Ohio, about 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Ohio said in a statement on Monday.
Chen was charged with theft, illegally accessing a federal database and two counts of making false statements to investigators. She could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the theft charge and five years each if convicted on the other charges, prosecutors said.
There cannot be anything classified about dams in America. Why would an employee be facing prison for downloading and looking at data on dams in this country? What could possibly be sensitive about a dam?

2 comments:

c w swanson said...

Terrorism. They're planning something unpleasant with the water supply.

HMS Defiant said...

Yes maybe so, but let's be honest, do you need structural data about a dam to poison the reservoir or blow the dam? Yes, it might be like looking at the structural data of the Twin Towers to see if flying planes into them might lead to their destruction. Me? I would have thought the towers would fall over if rammed with planes. This still looks really suspicious. They want her not just gone but gone to jail.