Security Messups

I'm waiting for the Israeli police to arrive and thought of "A Secure Place."

A Secure Place is what we all want in life; at the human level, at the nation level, at the world level. Actions of others, inevitably interfere and so our secure place feels less secure. When that happens, we seek our balance, that place where we can again feel secure. This blog is about that which enhances, that which infringes, and that which helps us return, again and again, to A Secure Place.

I've been thinking about starting something like this for a while and the last few days clinched my resolve.

What threatens our security - beyond those who threaten our society with rockets or attacks or bombings or whatever, are the security messups that occur within our own bureaucratic offices. So, why did the police come to my offices today? Well, it's an interesting and rather long story and, in some ways, may affect your secure place too.

Three years ago, the American Consulate in Jerusalem decided to hold an auction to get rid of old furniture, computers, desks, chairs, etc. I would guess this is something that is done throughout the world fairly regularly, as each consulate or embassy decides to refurnish and update so that those who come visit are welcomed and impressed. It helps them get rid of things without having to actually get up and move them and, in theory, helps the local population as well. "Locals" get some used stuff relatively cheaply, the American offices raise a few dollars and all are happy...unless something goes terribly wrong.

Our company saw an advertisement for such an auction and put in some bids and we "won" a room filled with filing cabinets. We had not even remembered bidding on them and yet...who can deny that receiving something like 20-30 metal file cabinets in varying sizes -all for the price of about $45 is a great bargain.

We paid the money and got a receipt - and now we were the proud owners of many varying cabinets - tall and short, gray and brown, two and three and four drawer. Some needed to be mounted, some had wheels. And some, we discovered a few weeks after we had put them into our storage room...hadn't been cleaned out properly by the American Consulate and were filled with all sorts of papers - piles and piles of documents - tax forms with social security numbers of Marines who had served in Israel, travel documents, copies of passports and expense accounts and so much more.

I'll write the rest of the story soon - for now, I'll just explain that the files have been returned to the American Consulate and are no longer here. I chose to give them to the Israeli police because I trust them to return them and confirm that this was done (especially after the Americans who had so badly messed up by leaving the documents in the file cabinets, dared to accuse me of stealing them!)

You might hear about this story in the news, or you might not. If you do hear about it, you might well hear the American officials here in Jerusalem spin their tale that all is well, that there really was never anything compromising left in the cabinets, and that others are blowing this out of proportion. I didn't think about this before, but after seeing how they jumped to call the Israeli police and suggest that I had stolen papers that they themselves had given to me, I decided that my secure place must be built on truth and so, I begin this blog not as I intended - about the fact that I live in Israel and that we need our country and society to be secure, but rather, I begin by writing about American security, as it was, to some extent, compromised not by terrorists, but by the careless action of some workers.