Government Classifed? Since When..

[TeeKup]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/27/confidential.mp3.player/

A man walks into a thrift store.
A New Zealand man finds confidential U.S. military files on a used MP3 player he bought at a thrift store for $9.

A New Zealand man finds confidential U.S. military files on a used MP3 player he bought at a thrift store for $9.

It sounds like the opening line to a bad joke. And this case was a bad joke -- for the Pentagon.

Chris Ogle of New Zealand was in Oklahoma about a year ago when he bought a used MP3 player from a thrift store for $9. A few weeks ago, he plugged it into his computer to download a song, and he instead discovered confidential U.S. military files.

"The more I look at it, the more I see, and the less I think I should be," Ogle said with a nervous laugh in an interview with TVNZ.

The files included the home addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers of U.S. soldiers. The player also included what appeared to be mission briefings and lists of equipment deployed to hot spots in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the information appears to date to 2005.

Wow.

[Con]

what the hells it doing on an mp3 player? in NZ?

[Phopojijo]

Not uncommon :-\

[Mr Buckshot]

Not really surprised, one time some guy bought a Zune for his daughter from Wal-mart and the Zune was loaded with porn (seriously). Not only was it just wrong, it also meant the father had been cheated - he paid a brand-new price for a secondhand product.

Same thing here I guess, except that it's with confidential files instead of porn, and being that it's a thrift store the MP3 would be secondhand.

And who in the right mind would put such files on an MP3 player? Flash drive, PDA, maybe, but an MP3?????

[Sel]

Oh wow.

[Limited]

This has happened about 10 times in the past 2 years in UK.

Last case I think had about 50 million citizens information, its fucking ridiculous.

[InnerGoat]

Time to ban flash drives from government computers.

[Limited]

Time to ban flash drives from government computers.
Also time to ban idiots from the government. Some idiot left a laptop on a train, which had tons of info on. I can understand a flash drive, if you drop it or forget to pick it up, but a laptop is a pretty hefty thing to forget.

[thehoodedsmack]

Wouldn't it be best just to install remote "fry-this-shit" technology in government media units? So as to not lose something and risk the leaked information? ,:|

[Timo]

heh, this was on the news here a few days ago. I thought he'd bought it in New Zealand, not America.

[Cojafoji]

Time to ban flash drives from government computers.
They are already banned in sensitive areas. If you were to try to walk into the CIA with a flash drive, and you worked there, you'd probably be arrested.

[Donut]

or at least have it confiscated

[legionaire45]

I know quite a few people at my school that use MP3 players as Portable HDDs (usually "old" 5th gen iPods). I think it's reasonable to assume that people involved with government agencies would have do something similar. Doesn't excuse the fact that they are morons for not formatting it though.

Hell, now that I think about it, an MP3 player might be a very inconspicuous place to hide information; most "average" people think an MP3 player is only for music and can't be used as an HDD or flash drive from what I have seen.

[Apoc4lypse]

Wouldn't it be best just to install remote "fry-this-shit" technology in government media units? So as to not lose something and risk the leaked information? ,:|

Its funny but that is probably very possible, I wonder if any of those idiots thought of doing that yet?

Of course it would take hella long to put such things to use not to mention the files they'd have to move.

Really though some sort of small device that they have to have installed on all there media storage devices (aside from cds..) like hard drives, some remote thing that just clears the drive (I think its possible with magnets or something idk). For flash drives, something that just makes the flashdrive stop working (self corrupts itself) idk... its a neat idea i think lol.

[legionaire45]

They already have shit like this commercially available (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/drives/99f1/).

The only thing stopping something like that from being implement is government paranoia that because the technology is "new".

[Rook]

Oh, huge pro at keeping information under wraps.