Stuff like this just chills me. We spend so much time swaggering around like we're the greatest, most powerful nation in the world, and that we should be
According to the BBC News this morning, it is possible to buy flash drives containing classified US Air Force materials in Afghanistan. Shopkeepers in a market next to the Bagram base outside Kabul (which we have occupied since we invaded) have been selling stolen American military property like unfiroms and binoculars as well as the drives. The drives were said by members of the LA Times and the Associated press to contain things like:
Names of corrupt Afghan officials
Reports on enemy targets and details about US defenses
Confidential information about US soldiers.
A description of the type of training a group of soldiers had received.
A manual for flying the Chinook helicopter
Information that could put the lives of several informants and sources at risk, including pictures, phone numbers, and even the names of their family members
Intelligence gathering strategies
Photos of classified portions of the base
With all this really secret stuff on them, you'd think they'd encrypt or password protect this stuff, right?
Nope, not most of it.
Many Afghani citizens work inside the boundaries of the base. This is not a problem in itself at all, but some of this kind of stuff isn't exactly something we should be leaving lying around in a sensitive area! A shopkeeper told the Associated Press that he wasn't interested in what was on the drives, but was selling them for their value as hardware. He said they were stolen from offices on base and that he gets them all the time.
Ok, maybe. And maybe he really is selling them for the hardware value on the street. But if the wrong person happened by his shop that day, they might end up with more than they bargained for.
Or maybe exactly what they bargained for.
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