T
Tommy Allison
Guest
Title: New Zealander buys MP3 player for $18... and gets sensitive U.S. military documents in the bargain
Source: Daily Mail
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1130259/New-Zealander-buys-MP3-player-18--gets-sen
Published: Jan 28, 2009
Author: David Williams
New Zealander buys MP3 player for $18... and gets sensitive U.S. military documents in the bargain
A New Zealander popped into a second-hand store to buy a cheap mp3 player -and ended up walking home with 60 sensitive U.S. military files. Chris Ogle, 29, bought the music player in February or March last year for $18 dollars at a thrift shop in Oklahoma City and found the files when he returned to the New Zealand city of Whangarei and linked the device to his computer. The files included names and telephone numbers of American soldiers, Social Security numbers and even which female troops were pregnant. The music-lover said: 'I was very surprised. I was curious enough to keep looking and I guess the more I looked the more intense it seemed to me. 'Each time I looked at it I became more convinced ... it was possibly something bigger.' Other information stored on the player included details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan, including the main U.S. base of Bagram and a mission briefing. Most of the files were dated 2005 and some of them included a warning that the release of the contents was 'prohibited by federal law'. Ogle, who lived and worked in Oklahoma for five years until last month, said he had no idea about the origins of the device before seeing it in the store, and that it 'didn't really ever work' as an audio player, with the sound cutting out before 'it made it even through an entire track.' Two U.S. Embassy staff from the capital, Wellington, visited Ogle at his home and took possession of the MP3 player, exchanging it for a new one. 'That was cool. It was a pretty serious upgrade,' Ogle said, laughing. U.S. Embassy officials did not immediately return calls for comment from the Associated Press. He said the men showed him U.S. Embassy identification and asked him if he had made any copies of the files. 'I said "yes, one, and you're welcome to it." 'People around me were suggesting I should get something from this and it even came up in conversation but at the end of the day I had promised to give it to them and I did.' The officials left with the music player and a computer disk with the only copy of the 60 files. It's not the first time such data files have surfaced in public. In 2006, shopkeepers outside the Bagram base said they were selling flash drives with U.S. military information that had been stolen by some of the 2,000 Afghans employed as cleaners, office staff and laborers at Bagram. Included on some memory drives seen by AP at the time were the Social Security numbers of hundreds of soldiers, including four generals, and lists of troops who had completed nuclear, chemical and biological warfare training
Source: Daily Mail
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1130259/New-Zealander-buys-MP3-player-18--gets-sen
Published: Jan 28, 2009
Author: David Williams
New Zealander buys MP3 player for $18... and gets sensitive U.S. military documents in the bargain
A New Zealander popped into a second-hand store to buy a cheap mp3 player -and ended up walking home with 60 sensitive U.S. military files. Chris Ogle, 29, bought the music player in February or March last year for $18 dollars at a thrift shop in Oklahoma City and found the files when he returned to the New Zealand city of Whangarei and linked the device to his computer. The files included names and telephone numbers of American soldiers, Social Security numbers and even which female troops were pregnant. The music-lover said: 'I was very surprised. I was curious enough to keep looking and I guess the more I looked the more intense it seemed to me. 'Each time I looked at it I became more convinced ... it was possibly something bigger.' Other information stored on the player included details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan, including the main U.S. base of Bagram and a mission briefing. Most of the files were dated 2005 and some of them included a warning that the release of the contents was 'prohibited by federal law'. Ogle, who lived and worked in Oklahoma for five years until last month, said he had no idea about the origins of the device before seeing it in the store, and that it 'didn't really ever work' as an audio player, with the sound cutting out before 'it made it even through an entire track.' Two U.S. Embassy staff from the capital, Wellington, visited Ogle at his home and took possession of the MP3 player, exchanging it for a new one. 'That was cool. It was a pretty serious upgrade,' Ogle said, laughing. U.S. Embassy officials did not immediately return calls for comment from the Associated Press. He said the men showed him U.S. Embassy identification and asked him if he had made any copies of the files. 'I said "yes, one, and you're welcome to it." 'People around me were suggesting I should get something from this and it even came up in conversation but at the end of the day I had promised to give it to them and I did.' The officials left with the music player and a computer disk with the only copy of the 60 files. It's not the first time such data files have surfaced in public. In 2006, shopkeepers outside the Bagram base said they were selling flash drives with U.S. military information that had been stolen by some of the 2,000 Afghans employed as cleaners, office staff and laborers at Bagram. Included on some memory drives seen by AP at the time were the Social Security numbers of hundreds of soldiers, including four generals, and lists of troops who had completed nuclear, chemical and biological warfare training
) ... so there you go another fascinating news story from the mighty Z of N (still its Waitangi Day next Friday ... anyone up for another fight on the Waitangi marae??? 
