Murphy's Law: February 27, 2002

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It's long been a problem that surplus military computers are sold off while they still contain classified information. After several embarrassing incidents in the 1990s, there is now a strict drill for erasing stuff off the hard drives, or, in the case of some organizations, physically destroying the hard drives before selling the rest of the PC. Now we discover a new problem. The U.S. European Command has just announced that a surplus laptop, sold for about $55, had a data CD in it's CD drive. The CD contained targeting information for the Balkans. What is really interesting about this is that the CD was prepared a year before the 1999 bombing campaign in Kosovo and Serbia. The CD would be useful for anyone that might face getting bombed by NATO, but is otherwise an interesting bit of military history. But the U.S. European Command would like it back. Please. No questions asked. 


 

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