WikiLeaks: US fears bioweapons from India labs

[Joanne98]

Source: AP

NEW DELHI (AP) — U.S. officials fear lax security at Indian laboratories could make the facilities targets for terrorists seeking biological weapons to launch attacks across the globe, according to comments in a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable made public Friday.

The cable was part of a trove of documents sent from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi that was obtained by the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks and published Friday by the British newspaper The Guardian.

The cables dealt with accusations of Indian torture in Kashmir and the concerns of Rahul Gandhi — seen as India's prime-minister-in-waiting — that Hindu extremists posed a greater danger to India than Islamist militants.

One of the cables from June 2006 raised concerns that terrorist groups could take advantage of weak security at Indian laboratories to steal "bacteria, parasites, viruses or toxins."



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jFtNjMEtQKxtxK1K2wdlyLLOnKsQ?docId=9c47182eef9546b3a2381ece2973b671

[txlibdem]

1. I guess some of the tens of millions of jobs shipped over to India may have been weapons designers

Whoops!

:hide:

[struggle4progress]

2. It's moronic to publicize this sort of thing: "Hey, everybody! You

can climb up the fire escape to the roof of ACME Blasting Company, and the roof access door doesn't lock! So anybody could walk right in after hours and steal a box of dynamite!'

[dreamnightwind]

3. I dunno

It could also lead to proper security measures being taken by firms in India dealing with dangerous biological agents.

[struggle4progress]

5. You can be sure the issue was raised face-to-face, if there was real concern

[dreamnightwind]

6. One would hope so, but...

you're assuming there would be a communications path where they could do so.

Think of a software vulnerability. Left unpublicized, it might go unnoticed, and of course, it would then go unfixed. What you don't know is if it's really unnoticed. Perhaps someone is probing for vulnerabilities, they could find it whether publicized or not. This happens all the time.

That's why software vulnerabilities are publicized, to panic the manufacturer into providing a fix, ASAP.

In the case of bio agent manufacturing, it's different than a software vulnerability, so I don't know if publicizing poor security is a good idea or not. It's unlikely, though, that the security will be tightened until the manufacturer is made aware of the vulnerability, and until they see a compelling reason to do so.

Would there necessarily be a way for a concerned US government to get the attention and a security fix from any Indian lab manufacturing potentially weaponized biological agents? Would they listen to us? Who knows? Our rep is not the best, the info might not be trusted. They'll sure as hell listen to a public leak, of course others are also listening. Scary.

[Ellipsis]

4. Yeah that's not so cool, let put idea's in their heads for them.