Slashdot Mirror
Data Breach Exposes RAF Staff To Blackmail
Yehuda writes "Wired reports, 'Yet another breach of sensitive, unencrypted data is making news in the United Kingdom. This time the breach puts Royal Air Force staff at serious risk of being targeted for blackmail by foreign intelligence services or others.
The breach involves audio recordings with high-ranking air force officers who were being interviewed in-depth for a security clearance. In the interviews, the officers disclosed information about extra-marital affairs, drug abuse, visits to prostitutes, medical conditions, criminal convictions and debt histories — information the military needed to determine their security risk.
The recordings were stored on three unencrypted hard drives that disappeared last year.'"
why didn't they just encrypt the disks? If it's supposed to be sensitive information, store it securely!
Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
These are the same idiots who are putting surveillance cameras everywhere, fingerprinting and taking DNA samples from musicians who are simply visiting the UK to play in a few clubs (then denying them entrance because the clubs hadn't paid a fee and agreed to report on them), and generally acting like fascists.
They're great at grabbing reams of private information they would have no right to if Britain were still a free society. Protecting it from unauthorized access? Not so much.
Goddamn wankers!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
How sick would a person have to be to be incapable of disloyalty?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Someone wanna explain to me how drug-using hooker-banging ex-cons are OFFICERS IN THE ROYAL AIR FORCE?
If yes to any of the above do you want these as officers?
If you threw out everyone who has ever done that one "immoral" thing, you'd have no one left. Everyone makes mistakes. Its even in the bible somewhere--a story about throwing stones (disclaimer: never read the bible). These are officers of a military. They are trained to kill people. Measure the morality of their actions against that fact and you'll find that indulging in something like and extramarital affair is minor by comparison. My only surprise is here is the lack of encryption.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Bad as it is, the amount pales into insignificance when compared to what we have given banks.
I bet there are a lot of bankers breathing sighs of relief that the focus of the public's ire has switched away from them.
Because with information of sufficient importance the very fact we don't have an exhaustive audit trail would be worrying (someone may of gotten access). The fact that we don't even know where it is? That, is scary. Not only is the risk that this data still exists, meaning that either careers will be ruined or national security will be endangered. But additionally it is a further reminder of how incompetent government can be with obviously important data.
Although you may find the strength of feeling some people have regarding this breech to be unfounded, I expect I am not alone in finding your opinion that nothing bad will happen because "it rarely does" incredibly naive.
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Keep it in your head. There is no such thing as absolute security, therefore there is no such thing as security. If you don't want to share something, don't share it with anybody.
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blog me no blogs
We gained more and more freedoms over time. Looking back, we certainly enjoy more freedoms today than we did a hundred years ago, at least in Europe. Most of mainland Europe was ruled by autocratic kings and emperors who restricted the exchange of ideas and discussions, criticising the government was often close to high treason. We sure came a long road from this.
When you look at it with a finer grained system, you'll notice, though, that liberties are in decline, though, and have been since the 1960s, at least in my perspective. It's been especially rough in the last ten or so years, when people all over the world could easily communicate with each other and exchange ideas much more easily and rapidly than ever before. Such things frighten governments and other powerful people. Because it's also never been easier to "spill the beans" and whistleblow.
Government and industry are quite close to each other these days, and neither wants some of their practices to be smeared all over the planet, for everyone to read. It's never been easier for people to get information into circulation, content is not just music and movies, it's also information and ideas, and they can be spread, multiplied and distributed just as quickly.
And that's what scares not only the content industry, but everyone who could be threatened by the quick distribution of any kind of information.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.