U.S. Military Secrets for Sale at Afghan Bazaar

[lyger <lyger () attrition org>]

Via Bruce Schneier's weblog: http://www.schneier.com/blog/

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-disks10apr10,0,5854905,full.story

By Paul Watson, Times Staff Writer
April 10, 2006

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - No more than 200 yards from the main gate of the 
sprawling U.S. base here, stolen computer drives containing classified 
military assessments of enemy targets, names of corrupt Afghan officials 
and descriptions of American defenses are on sale in the local bazaar.

Shop owners at the bazaar say Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors and 
other workers from the base arrive each day offering purloined goods, 
including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra and flash 
memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack 
of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.

The thefts of computer drives have the potential to expose military 
secrets as well as Social Security numbers and other identifying 
information of military personnel.

...

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that 
identified nearly 700 U.S. service members and their Social Security 
numbers, information that identity thieves could use to open credit card 
accounts in soldiers' names.

[...]


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