Another major leak! 11,000 US federal workers could access White House floor plans, other sensitive documents: Report

Just as the US government is fighting the fallout of the Signalgate leak, another report has claimed that sensitive information including White House floor plans may have been inadvertantly sent to some 11,000 federal workers. The information was shared during both the current Trump administration as well as when his predecessor Joe Biden was at the White House.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the oversight happened at the the General Services Administration or GSA.

GSA is responsible for supporting the federal bureaucracy and managing government properties. 

The concerning report comes just weeks after a Signal group chat on US plans to attack the Houthi rebels in Yemen was leaked when a journalist was inadvertently added to the chat group.

Documents open to all GSA staff, and which could have been potentially leaked, included blueprints of the White House East and West Wings, according to the Washington Post report

All the files were not classified, but might have contained information that should have been closely guarded from the enemies of the US.

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The data breach came to light during internal audits last week, according to the report. The tech team of IT locked down the files, and reversed access to the documents.

An investigation is currently underway.

According to the Washington Post report, a Google Drive folder containing the sensitive data was made accessible to the entire GSA staff, which numbers around 11,000.

Exactly how many of these staffers may have opened and seen the information, or worse, shared it outside, is not clear from the report.

The details in the folder included White House security features, including a proposed blast door for the White House Visitor Center, and even banking information for a vendor tied to a Trump-era news conference.

It is alarming news, given that the Capitol riot happened not too long ago.

On 6 January 2021, a group of Trump supporters barged into the Capitol Hill when Trump rejected the outcome of the 2020 November election.

The error may have been triggered by the actions of some career employees at the GSA, and a full investigation is on, according to the Washington Post.

May of the files in the folder were marked as CUI, meaning Controlled Unclassified Information.

These were not all classified information, but sensitive enought to be protected from outsiders.

Shockingly, it also emerged that out of the 15 documents, 10 were editable, meaning any GSA staff member with access could have altered the contents in the files.

The 'free for all' access to the GSA documents dates back to March 2021, just two months after Biden took over as president, and into the current Trump administration.

The report said there was also a 'particularly damaging leak' as recently as last week. 

The GSA is now facing intense scrutiny over its handling of digital security, as the breach shows how easy it is for data to slip through. 

“These documents should never have been shared with 11,000 people. The potential risks are enormous,” the report quoted an expert as saying.

GSA is revieiwing its practices and has intensified  training efforts to ensure a security disaster like this does not occur in future, the report added.