If they didn't know it by know, people should learn that, when buying second-hand things, they might get a little more than they bargained for. The best example is the case of New Zealand's Chris Ogle, who bought a used MP3 player for 9 bucks, in Oklahoma, and discovered that the player contained classified US Military data.

Chris Ogle, 29, of Whangarei, said the MP3 player had never worked as a music player, but when he connected it up to his computer, he found 60 files listing classified US Military details. The files, mostly dated from 2005, detailed the names and mobile phone numbers of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as other locations overseas. It also included social security numbers of the soldiers - numbers that are confidential to Americans because of identity theft and fraud risks. Some of the information even appears to be a mission briefing.

 

A similar situation was uncovered in Afghanistan in 2006 when U.S. investigators bought stolen flash drives with military information outside Bagram base - a major U.S. military outpost in Afghanistan. In November 2008, the U.S. Department of Defense banned the use of USB storage devices to prevent leaks like this from happening again. Apparently, that wasn't a great success.

 

How such a major security breach could occur has not been explained by the U.S. Department of Defense, although similar instances have been reported. Neither the U.S. embassy in New Zealand nor the U.S. Army have ventured any comment on the breach.

 

Experts have described the incident as an example of "slack" administration. "One of the first rules of military endeavor is not to give the opposition anything whatsoever that they could use to compromise your position, in any way at all," said Peter Cozens of Strategic Studies at Victoria University. "This is just slack administrative procedures which are indeed a cause of embarrassment. And it's the sort of thing which ought not really to be in the public domain," he added.
 

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