January 29, 2009
It’s events like this that makes one wonder what in the hell is going on. A man goes into a thrift shop and pays $18 dollars for an MP3 player. It never really works as far as playing music. He’s out the $18. But when he connects it to his computer he finds 60 US Military files containing soldiers names, SSN, phone numbers, which female troops were pregnant, details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan (including the main base in Bagram) and a mission briefing dated 2005.
Who would have this and why would they be selling it to a thrift shop? Was it stolen and never reported?
The upstanding lad who made the discovery, Chris Ogle, 29, of New Zealand, who had live and worked in Oklahoma until last month, called the US embassy in Wellington. Ogle assured them he had done nothing with the data prior to handing them over. He was delighted with the exchange of a “pretty serious upgrade”. No brand mentioned.
Source AP:
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.
How insane is this? And had he not been a good guy? How much other sensitive data is out their lost, stolen, sold or misplaced? Who makes sure this data sis accounted for.
