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thedrifter
01-27-09, 06:52 AM
iSpy; or, The Only Thing More Embarrassing Is All Those Kelly Clarkson Songs
[Fred Schwarz]


NRO colleague Kevin Williamson passes along this item from Wired.com’s Danger Room:

It's like Burn After Reading, the latest Coen brothers' flick, come to life. Well, kinda sorta.



"A New Zealand man has found confidential United States military files on an MP3 player," the Age reports. He bought at an Oklahoma thrift shop, for less than ten bucks.



Chris Ogle wasn't looking for secrets during his little shopping trip, of course. But when he brought the player home and hooked it up, "he discovered a playlist he could never have imagined," New Zealand's TV One pants.



The sixty files included personal details of American soldiers, equipment data, and what "appears to be a mission briefing." Most of the info comes from 2005, however. And there are no report of truly secret squirrel material. So it may not be enough to get Brad Pitt or Frances McDormand involved in a down-under remake, alas.

I’m not sure what all this was doing on a soldier’s MP3 player, but the information it contained, mostly telephone and Social Security numbers, would probably not be of much use to a bunch of terrorists in the caves of Kandahar. So you have to figure the soldiers in question are pretty safe, unless this MP3 player falls into the hands of Code Pink.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/sensitive-army.html

Ellie

thedrifter
01-28-09, 10:59 AM
U.S. retrieves MP3 player with military files
Wed Jan 28, 2009 10:00am EST

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand man who bought a second-hand MP3 player that contained U.S. military files on personnel who served in Afghanistan and Iraq handed it over to U.S. officials on Wednesday, New Zealand media reported.

Chris Ogle, 29, bought the $10 MP3 at a thrift shop in Oklahoma but when he plugged it in discovered it contained 60 U.S. military files, said New Zealand television program One News which broke the story.

The files contained the names and personal details of American soldiers, including ones who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as information about equipment deployed to bases and a mission briefing, said One News.

Some files contained active mobile telephone numbers and social security numbers of military personnel.

U.S. embassy officials in New Zealand spoke to Ogle on Tuesday night and swapped his old MP3 player for a new one on Wednesday, New Zealand Press Association said.

Ogle said the officials asked him what computers the player's files had been loaded onto and whether he had made copies and then photographed some of the files, but would not say how sensitive the information was.

"They asked where I'd bought it from, the timeframe that I bought it in," Ogle said.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Ellie