Two laptops containing ‘classified’ war plans were lifted from CentCom in Florida. Fifty-one pigs are hot on the case. Fifty-one cops for 2 laptops? The laptop thefts might be related to leaks to the New York Times. Big Brother is gonna be mad as heck. Courtesy of the Tampa Tribune:
Outside of military theaters of operation, such large-scale OSI deployments are nearly unprecedented, Richmond said. In the agency’s most celebrated cases, seldom have more than one or two specialists been brought in from other bases, and those investigations generally involved homicides or tracking down fugitives.
“It’s pretty unusual to bring in a large, large contingent of agents like this,” Richmond said. “It’s pretty far from the norm. I’m not aware of any [investigations] on this scale.”
Any time the military or the government screws up this way or gets screwed in this way it really makes my day. It means the control apparatus is not invulnerable. They have their weaknesses. One of the principal weaknesses is the inefficiency and stupidity of bureaucratic institutions.
I have a simple rule when it comes to computerized data: anything you don’t want known, don’t leave it on your frickin’ hard drive. Can they not teach these government flunkies simple things like saving to floppy drive a? (Or writing to a cd and then removing the darn thing before turning the computer off. And for god’s sake, _delete_ your emails!)
Then again, people are remarkably stupid where portable computers are concerned. Once at a place I worked we had to watch a film on security that admonished us not to leave a laptop someplace public, like an airport, and then walk away. We all laughed — then one of the employees came into a laptop that some guy left on a bus bench. (Of course those were more innocent times. Nowadays if I saw someone leave a computer alone in a public place, I’d start running.)