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MI5 Laptop Stolen -- Along With Top-Secret Data
Tuscahoma writes "ZDNet has this story about an MI5 agent who lost a laptop containing sensitive information at Paddinton station. Does this sound like the plot of a bad spy movie (turns out that Julia Roberts picked up the laptop to return it, and now she's on the run for her life from enemy spies)?" This really does sound like a screenwriter's dream. I wonder if the machine's already been fenced, the hard drive wiped, and some Londoner is wondering at the "Property of M15. PLEASE return" in the BIOS.
This isn't the first time this has happened. During the Gulf war, something very similar occured.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Well, imagine an agent trying to go to, say, WC and do the usuall stuuf there - with laptop handcuffed to him. It'd be a bit inconvenient, no? Same with eating, buying tickets and many other regular activities...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Disclaimer: I'm British
:-)
On the humour front, I love a line I recall from a humorous TV program some time in the seventies/eighties (cold war still going strong). Sorry if this is offensive
"The Americans are trying to make up for being late for the last two world wars by making sure they are really early for the next one".
Anyway, as to "many Americans perceive an arrogance from most britons" - that does seem quite possible.
But is this because Brits feel superior, because Americans feel inferior or because Americans feel Brits feel superior?
How do you perceive what I'm phrasing now? I'm just trying to be precise...
With the M15 laptop stolen, how are we going to get our next Mozilla milestone? This will set back development immensely, and it's all the English government's fault. I bet Microsoft paid off the English government to have them lose it.
Wait...that's an I, not a 1...
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
We will never be able to come to a consensus on which 10% ISN'T crap.
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
Just to clarify things, the agency is called MI5, not M15 .. another agency is MI6.
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IIRC, it's been said before that MI5 and MI6 spy on each other...
I think MI5 is domestic and MI6 is supposed to be international, but there is overlap.
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IIRC, there is an encrypted ext2fs that you can use, where you supply the password when you mount or something..
I wonder if it was this, or some Win32 based encrypted filesystem.
--
Doug
We know the data is safe because they are using the Super Secure(tm) Windows NT 4.0 operating system. Oh yeah, it is also in its prime state for high security, being it not connected to a network and all.
There must be a joke in there somewhere to call this whole line of work the 'intelligence business' :-)
We're the guys who are always talking about how the NSA has such amazing technology and can decrypt things sooo much faster than we or distributed.net can come close to, aren't we?
--
linuxisgood:~$ man woman
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
A similar thing happened in Toronto a while ago. A CSIS agent (one of the Canadian spy organizations) left a briefcase in his car while attending a Maple Leafs game. The briefcase had a bunch of sensitive documents and was stolen when his car was broken into.
:)
Maybe Canada and the UK use the same training programs for their agents
Dana
The guy who had the laptop was an 'intelligence' officer/operative/whatever. (Not a particularly good one, I'm guessing.) He would have been PRETTY conspicuous with a pair of handcuffs connecting him to his luggage. It's probably a good idea to NOT handcuff yourself to things if you want to blend into the background and gather top-secret information on Ireland while typing it into your laptop...
...to make this scenerio more embarassing -- make the laptop
be a 'cute little pink iMac' laptop. >:D
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
In this age of unlimited interconnectivity, it's amazing what we consider "Old News" these days.
_________________________
because if he takes his work home with him, who's looking over his shoulder? in this day of wide-area networks and 9823749823742-bit encryption transmission or whatever, i don't see any reason whatsoever for classified to be on a laptop, when the last thing you want is for information to be carried around, especially out of the scif. i work for the nsa myself, and believe me if i tried something like that, i know they'd make sure that i had my own room in hell. otoh, seeing as the director of the nsa was fired last year for allegedly 'taking his work home with him'...
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Didnt this story break on Thursday?
Not sure if this is just stuff that I've seen in the movies or if it's true to life, but don't these people usually have the things handcuffed to them or something?
And if not... SHOULDN'T THEY?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
It was Bear, Paddinton Bear
Your pain is funny
Yes, and these are the kind of morons that the government wants to give the key to every encryption system used within the UK.
Too bloody right they are !!!!!!
As well as the (*irony*) beautifully crafted RIP bill (*/irony), in their infinite wisdom, the UK government now are bringing in a new 'Terrorism Act' which redefines terrorism as being err.... anything that the Government want really. So swiping a lap-top some MI5 civil service type left unattended can get you 'Enemy of the State' status as well....... bit like being chased by the Keystone Cops, I suppose.
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
I lost my watch on saturday in the men's locker room at the downtown YMCA, It had sensitive data on it, like the actual secret correct time as set by an atomic clock in a government institution somewhere in midwestern united states. I had it strapped to my wrist as so many have suggested is the best way to save it, but I fear it may have been sabotaged by enemy spies who I also note were eyeing me in the shower room.
I don't think this agent was a spy, but apparently this laptop contained information on the state of terrorist activity in N. Ireland. Since the data was important enough to be encrypted, the theft is a major concern.
Just a few years from now, a scenario like this will be unthinkable. Intel recently announced a new technology using fingerprints and tiny Smart Cards for user security with laptops. If terrorists are to make any use of a stolen computer, they'll have to steal the owner's digit as well.
I must say I don't really feel comfortable about all this new technology...
www.e.magazine.dk
Weren't some MI5 agents executed in WWII for selling secrets to the Nazis? It's likely that this agent needed away to get the secrets to the people who paid him off, while at the same time looking innocent.
It wasn't stolen, it was *sold*, people.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (
I know it seems harsh, but this is one reason I'd like to see a username blacklist feature available on Slashdot. The idea doesn't impress me, but it seems necessary now that stuff like this guy is showing up posting advertising spam with a Slashdot account.
Moderating is all well and good, but it won't always catch them before I read a thread. It seems much easier to provide a simple list that I can add 'impulsiveprofits' to, and never have to think about him again.
Look at his profile, he's posted 8 times this week, each one spam advertising.
Yes, and these are the kind of morons that the government wants to give the key to every encryption system used within the UK.
Yes, I know you're watching me...
Deleted
Both of the computers were recovered.
It was posted on Slashdot awhile back, and here is a link to the original story.
On a note to the story, what's going to happen to the MI5 agent? I'm assuming that he will be quietly discharged, and a few months down the road he'll disappear. (That usually happens to clumsy government agents. heh.)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
I've always assumed that they end up being bought and sold on the internet's own black market... you know... EBay.
I'm only half-joking. Think about it, you have an open market where people all over the world can legally bid on your merchandise, and no effort is ever made to verify that the product being sold is not stolen (though there is some insurance the the product actually exists). Once someone buys it from you it becomes a legal item again, as that person has their "reciept" from the EBay auction...
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
I suspect that unless he snuck the laptop out (bad spy!), either the data is not that sensitive, or the entire hard drive was encrypted (or both).
Though actually, I'll bet there are a lot of people who would like to get ahold of the encryption software or hardware (probably hardware), in order to reverse engineer it. Not neccesarily for any bad purposes, mind you, I supsect that people such as Ross Anderson or Lars Knudsen (a couple of cryptographers, for those not in the know) would love to get ahold of something like that and be able to say that they broke a cipher used by MI5.
Also, I doubt this guy is actually a spy of any sort: more likely a desk worker of some sort.
"On a note to the story, what's going to happen to the MI5 agent? I'm assuming that he will be quietly discharged, and a few months down the road he'll disappear. (That usually happens to clumsy government agents. heh.)"
:)
If you're fimiliar with the Dilbert Principle, this agent will be promoted to upper-management in no time at all.
Is publicizing the theft/loss the right thing to do in this situation? What could MI5 possibly gain by announcing to the entire world that one of its bumbling agents has lost a laptop containing "sensitive government information"? If nothing else, the information might make the person who found (or stole) the machine realize that he has something really valuable in his hands, and decide to fence the sensitive information to MI5 enemies, or demand a huge reward, or even hold it for ransom. The saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but I wonder if this might be an exception.
begin 644
I think this would make a good children's story:
A nice family finds the laptop in Paddington Station and decide to take it home and take care of it. It tends to get into little adventures and hilarity ensues.
One of my former roommates bought such a laptop, only to find out later it was stolen from the CEO of a certain major corporation. He found out after looking at the hard drive, which not only had Windows 95 installed on it, but lots of files relating to executive business of said corporation.
The bizarre part is apparently no one at the computer store ever looked at what, besides Windows 95 itself, was actually installed on the thing, nor did anybody try to format the disk.
I don't think they ever caught the thief.....so some details have been obscured.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I had a laptop stoling a couple years ago and was just wondering what typically happens to them? Do the thieves sell them as is or do they wipe the HD, install a fresh Win9x (or maybe the latest OpenBSD :)) and then take them to the swap meet? My laptop was a WinNT 4 Server used for demoing web apps, and I doubt the average thug would know what to do when he couldn't just hit ESC to bypass the password prompt. Maybe such systems just wind up in the trash? Are there actually big time laptop-thieving operations or do people just steal them because they can't afford to buy one capable of running Win2K? My apologies for the lack of facts and plethora of questions.
According to the reports over here...
1) The bloke with the Laptop was buying a ticket. This can frequently be a long, tedious complex process - especially at Paddington Station. One of Londons stations which serves some of the rather less -well organised rail companies. And you wouldn't believe how complicated buying a ticket can be in this country at the moment.
2) He put the Laptop down, between his legs.
3) Someone snatched it from behind and ran off. The guy realised at once and gave chase, helped by a couple of Transport Police. But the thief got away.
AJB