Hong Kong Wen Wei Po reports that over the past four years, officials from former U.S. President Trump's administration and the Biden presidency have been inappropriately sharing multiple sensitive documents. The Washington Post disclosed on Sunday, April 20th, that some of these sensitive documents were even uploaded to Google Drive cloud storage, where they could be freely viewed by as many as 11,200 federal government employees, including potentially confidential blueprints of the White House. The report bluntly states that this security breach, which lasted for four years, was only recently discovered, highlighting the carelessness of both administrations.
This leak originated from the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), an agency responsible for providing administrative and technical support to most federal agencies. Internal records obtained by The Washington Post revealed that in 2021, a GSA employee mistakenly shared a Google Drive folder containing sensitive documents with over 11,200 GSA employees. The contents included the blast-proof door design scheme for the White House visitor center and bank account information of the PR firm assisting the Trump administration with press conferences.
Repeated Mistakes by GSA Employees
The report noted that in March 2021, this GSA employee erroneously shared a folder on the security environment management investigation of the White House East Wing, including design plans for the visitor entrance and the First Lady's office. In December of the same year, the employee mistakenly shared the design plans for the White House West Wing again, covering the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, Situation Room, and Press Briefing Room floor plans.
After Trump's return to the White House, GSA mistakenly shared three documents with all its employees once again, including two "Controlled Unclassified Information" (CUI) documents and one related to bank account information. The most recent mistake occurred just last week. The GSA Office of the Inspector General only discovered the breach during a security review last week and revoked the sharing on Thursday.
Potential Classified Nature of White House Internal Architectural Structures
The implicated folder contained 15 documents, nine of which were CUI. According to U.S. government regulations, CUI refers to "sensitive information that does not meet the criteria for classified status but still requires protection." Records show that at least ten of the mistakenly shared files had allowed any GSA employee to view or even edit their contents over the past four years.
Christopher Ford, a security policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), explained that if the documents merely listed publicly known layouts of the White House buildings, they would not be classified. However, if the documents contained any undisclosed internal architectural structures, passages, or security facilities of the White House, they could be classified under an executive order protecting national security information issued in 2009.
Ford criticized that even if these documents were not officially classified, "for obvious security reasons, they should have been strictly safeguarded." William May, a security policy expert at Syracuse University, also criticized the errors, stating they pose a risk of leaks and challenge the U.S. government's ability to maintain confidentiality.
Resource: https://www.wenweipo.com/a/202504/22/AP68065572e4b00814d47b7302.html
