NASA Technical Reports Database Goes Dark

NASA Technical Reports Database Goes Dark

www.fas.org

This week NASA abruptly took the massive NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) offline. Though no explanation for the removal was offered, it appeared to be in response to concerns that export controlled information was contained in the collection.
...
NASA Public Affairs did not respond yesterday to an inquiry about the status of the site, the reason for its suspension, or the timeline for its return.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
nasawatch.com
up-ship.com

Another website ("NASA Watch") states that NASA HQ PAO has said that "It's down for review to ensure there is no sensitive content on the server."
nasawatch.com...

Unfortunately, this material is not available via the Wayback Machine's internet archive. The Wayback Machine is an excellent resource, but the fact that the NASA material isn't on there is a remember that the Wayback Machine does not archive all web-pages - for various reasons. For example, the owners of a website can decide whether to allow pages from their website to be "crawled" or displayed.

If you try to access a cache of ntrs.nasa.gov... via the Wayback Machine's you will see that this applies to the NASA Technical Reports website.

I would endorse the sentiment expressed in the conclusion to the first article at the link in the OP: "The upshot is that the government is not an altogether reliable repository of official records" and "Members of the public who depend on access to such records should endeavor to make and preserve their own copies whenever possible".

In the context of UFO research, my only quibble with that conclusion is that the desirability of a few UFO researchers/groups making back-up of important material on websites isn't limited solely to government websites...

Trying to reduce the reliance on other websites (whether Government run or otherwise) is one of the reasons (along with trying to improve ways of searching material) for several of my threads on ATS over the years (e.g. on how to download large collections of UFO documents from the Canadian government, the US Air Force and the FBI). On a related note, I started a thread in the Computer Help forum today which I could still use some help with:
HTTrack wildcard help? Downloading Australian UFO documents


www.fas.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

Originally posted by IsaacKoi

NASA Technical Reports Database Goes Dark

www.fas.org

This week NASA abruptly took the massive NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) offline. Though no explanation for the removal was offered, it appeared to be in response to concerns that export controlled information was contained in the collection.
...
NASA Public Affairs did not respond yesterday to an inquiry about the status of the site, the reason for its suspension, or the timeline for its return.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
nasawatch.com
up-ship.com

So what are you hinting at with regards to this news? Sensitive information on Aliens/UFO's could have been compromised, or something else?

Nice find, though I wouldn't read too much into it.
Security has been breached or may have been breached so Im guessing this is part of protocol.
It would be logical to take the machines offline and check for some backdoor and perform other post mortem analysis.
Also if some evidence of breach can be collected, the machines should be taken off line asap. Or else the evidence could have been tempered with. (I'm sure you know how that works , regarding the evidence I mean)

Originally posted by Just Chris
So what are you hinting at with regards to this news? Sensitive information on Aliens/UFO's could have been compromised, or something else?

I'm not hinting at anything. I'm saying, as the authors of the article in the OP conclude, that it's undesirable to rely entirely on online collections of official documents (or any other interesting resource for that matter) since the plug could be pulled at any time and there is no guarantee that services such as the Wayback Machine's Internet Archive will have a cache of the relevant webpage.

If you find certain material online interesting, then it's a good idea to think about backing it up on your own hard drive.

In the context of UFO research, I'd like to see more of an organised attempt by UFO researchers/groups to make backups of relevant material from websites (whether its government websites or just a website run by an amateur researcher that's devoted a lot of time and effort to relevant research but may decide to terminate his website tomorrow).

Originally posted by z00mster
Security has been breached or may have been breached so Im guessing this is part of protocol.
It would be logical to take the machines offline and check for some backdoor and perform other post mortem analysis.

The problem, as I understand it, isn't that someone gained access to a secure system so security systems need to be reviewed but rather that NASA may have released things it ought not to have released - so NASA has faced calls to remove EVERYTHING on that system until all the DOCUMENTS are ALL reviewed. (There was a heck of a lot of material on that website, so some of the comments on this event suggest it would take a LONG time to perform any such review).

See, for example, the call by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA:

spaceref.com...

Second: NASA should immediately take down all publicly available technical data sources until all documents that have not been subjected to export control review have received such a review and all controlled documents are removed from the system.

Additionally, NASA should provide the Defense Department, Commerce Department, State Department and the Congress a detailed disclosure report describing any documents found to have been inappropriately made available and determine which countries of concern that have accessed these controlled documents.

As a result, a large volume of material was simply removed from the Internet without warning.

JSC Technical Reports Server is still up and running. I doubt that it will be for long, as JPL TRS looks to be in the process of being shut down right now.

This is a huge overreaction to the Bo Jiang incident and is purely politics.


EDIT: JPL TRS is back up.

Originally posted by Zarniwoop
This is a huge overreaction to the Bo Jiang incident and is purely politics.

Well, I can understand NASA not wanting to be seen as ignoring calls made by the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA...

If I had to balance my funding against the principle of openness, I'd stop and think about things a bit as well.

reply to post by IsaacKoi


It's a knee-jerk reaction by Wolf and likely an equally knee-jerk reaction by NASA to take the TRS offlline with no notice or explanation in response. They don't even know yet what was on the hard drives/computers Jiang was taking back to China. Only the FBI knows that... (an it's probably nothing.)

However, if you read NASAwatch much, this is typical NASA behavior.

I noticed that yesterday.

Too bad I didn't use their OAI-PMH interface before to get a copy of their database.

Lesson learned.

Originally posted by Just Chris
So what are you hinting at with regards to this news? Sensitive information on Aliens/UFO's could have been compromised, or something else?

So what if it were that? NASA is not the main to hold information about UFOs, though, the military do that.

reply to post by IsaacKoi


I figure this has got something to do with the US export compliance.

I did work for a large US based PC manufacturer, and my job was to check orders for any sign that the ordered device ( Notebooks in most cases ) might be brought to a blacklisted country, such as North Korea. There are lists with Mega-flop numbers and from a certain computing power on the device may serve to steer a missile for example, so I had to cancel these orders.

So I guess certain technologies in NASA database fall under the US export compliance regulations, and publishing something in the WWW is the same like physically delivering this data into a blacklisted country.

Interesting. As of right now, the JPL TRS is being bombarded... the pages barely load.

It appears that people may be trying to download everything off of it before some of it goes away.

Why they shut down the Main NASA TRS and left the other two up and running is a mystery.

It looks like they added some text to the main site since yesterday to explain why it is down.

The NASA technical reports server will be unavailable for public access
while the agency conducts a review of the site's content to ensure that it
does not contain technical information that is subject to U.S. export control laws
and regulations and that the appropriate reviews were performed.
The site will return to service when the review is complete.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Wouldn't it have been a lot smarter to conduct the review without all the publicity from shutting the site down with no explanation?

A lot of stuff is still available on the EDIT: It won't parse the BB code correctly, so here is the full link:

web.archive.org...://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/10019

2nd EDIT: Bah it doesn't work due to the 2nd "http" part .. just go to web.archive.org... and enter trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov into the box.

But the last archived version is from 2010. I didn't look in detail though if the physical documents got archived from the spider I have to admit.

In my eyes there is nothing sinister or mysterious going on. It's just bureaucracy doing its thing.

Maybe they were updating the server?

Originally posted by Tefts
Maybe they were updating the server?

Nope. The website is still off-line. It now has more of an explanation (which, it turns out, is along the lines of the speculation by me and some others above):

ntrs.nasa.gov...

The NASA technical reports server will be unavailable for public access
while the agency conducts a review of the site's content to ensure that it
does not contain technical information that is subject to U.S. export control laws
and regulations and that the appropriate reviews were performed.
The site will return to service when the review is complete.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Satellite problems?