Classified Documents Recovered on MP3 Player
A New Zealand citizen uncovers US troop information on second hand digital MP3 player, according to a local TV news report from New Zealand
The man who made this find Chris Ogle claims he discovered the US army digital files when he went to transfer music from his computer to his MP3 player one evening.
The New Zealander says found the secret data regarding US military personnel on an Personal media player he bought from a second hand shop in Oklahoma, USA.
Chris Ogle, 29, said: “The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be looking.”
These secret data files include the telephone numbers and names of US armed forces personal, according to news reports by a New Zealand TV channel.
Still, the Pentagon can relax a bit, as according to a leading expert, these confidential records in question, are unlikely to present a security risk, as they are dated from 2005, consequently are already 5 years out of date.
Still there could be some embarrassment in the top brass, as various files found included the warning that the release of this information is “prohibited by federal law”.
As well as the individual details of the US soldiers, including a listing of their social security numbers, the information files also detailed pregnant female soldiers, who will by now be female troop mothers, there were also apparent briefings of missions in Afghanistan.
A spokes person from the Center for Strategic Studies in New Zealand, said of course that while these records should not be circulating in the public domain. He thought it did not appear that it would have a negative affect on national security in the USA.
“This is just slack administrative procedures which are indeed a cause of embarrassment,” he said.
Mean wile Mr Ogle, from Whangarei, said he would hand over the digital files to the US government if required to do so.
At the moment there’s still no statement from the US Embassy in Wellington.
This is not the first time that such laps in security surrounding classified US armed forces digital information stored on portal devices.
In 2006 Afghanistan, it was reported that US investigators recovered stolen flash memory drives that contained sensitive US military data from local shops in Bagram just by a main US base there.