[rescue] Govt Surplus RAM disappearance (was: Sparc IPX's)

[George Adkins]

> On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 05:34:35PM -0500, dave at cca.org wrote:
> > Is removing RAM a recent policy? I've gotten lots of ex-mil stuff
> > with drives removed, but never RAM. But I'm also aware that the
<snip>
> may be more paranoid (like the NSA or somethin?). Missing ram for
> "security reasons" sounds to me like either some PHB needed someting to
> say about what their group had done to increase security or someone
> needed the ram for someting else...
>

Having been deeply involved at one time with dmil-d and dmil-b contracts for 
surplus through drmo at a military post here on the east coast, I can offer a 
couple bits of insight into the conditions of Surplus Government Electronics 
Equipment.

I can tell you right now, that not all equipment "surplussed" from Government 
service has to have the storage media removed.  There are tons of this 
equipment which come from non-secret uses and non-secure areas that get sent 
out with the entire machine intact.  one of my biggest pet-peeves while 
working these contracts has been (and I'm not going to pull any punches 
here...)  THIEVES.

Day after day, I watched truckloads of equipment come in and get sorted for 
disposal.  The easily re-saleable stuff was sorted onto palletes and placed 
up for sealed-bid auctions, while much of the remainder, i.e. incomplete 
systems, non-working or bizarre equipment, and things that were not readily 
identifiable went outside into the "D" yard for sale to by-the-pound contract 
purchases.

Day after day, I watched the fat, worthless Government Civillian Employees 
leech this system.  The guy who was in charge of classification and sorting 
had all the newer equipment that came in pulled aside and stripped.  bags of 
memory, boxes of hard disks, anything which looked like a newer rev. of Intel 
Processor were pulled.  All these items were (of course) pulled to his office 
at the end of the day.  And then, after quitting time, the empty gym bag that 
came in with him in the morning would go back out the gate with him looking 
rather heavier than it had in the morning, right out the gate and right into 
the trunk of his white Impala.

The 30-pin memory and processors in the '486's passed right through the line, 
and in time, the 72 pin memory and the pentiums started to get through as 
well.  Hard drives less than 1 gig were never stripped, but see a PPRO 
machine, or a PII get through?  It was a empty.  Period.  Suns?  the memory 
was always stripped, except for later on when the 16 meg DIMMs in the sparc 
10's started to show up.  Any M-Bus processor?  Gone.

Where were they going?  I don't know, but I'm sure that the end of the line 
was his bank account.  And he wasn't the only one... I never saw an 8mm tape 
drive make it through the sorting house, ever.  They went in, but never out.
I mentioned it, but you want to know what I was told?  Shut up.  Or you'll be 
out of here so fast, you won't know what hit you.

I didn't last long.