• New Zealand man buys MP3 player loaded with U.S. military data

    Nicholas Deleon

    Nicholas likes video games, soccer, UFC, and astronomy–particularly the study of asteroids. He went to NYU. → Learn More

    Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

    mp3nz

    A Kiwi bought an MP3 player in Oklahoma. No, that’s not a setup to a bad joke, but the chilling, real life ordeal that currently is the long national nightmare of New Zealand.

    The problem here is that the MP3 player contains military personnel data, and revealing that information—personal phone numbers, the identities of pregnant female soldiers, social security numbers, mission briefings, etc.—violates “federal law.” (How does that work? A man breaks an American law while in New Zealand.) No reason to worry, though, as the guy has no plans to, I don’t know, leak the information via his Twitter account. (He’ll hand the files over to American officials if they ask.) Besides, the information is four years old.

    You’ll note that a similar thing happened in 2006, when a bunch of flash drives containing sensitive military information was stolen and later sold in Afghanistan.

    Photo: Flickr

    blog comments powered by Disqus