Pawn Shop MP3 Player Held U.S. Military Secrets

For the last several years, nary a month goes by without some corporation or government entity saying "Oops, we lost some sensitive data!" Usually, we find out what was lost before finding out who found it (or took it).

Not this time.

A few months back, Chris Ogle walked into an Oklahoma thrift store and purchased a used MP3 player for $18 (judging from the picture on Engadget, it was not an iPod). Upon bringing it home and connecting the device to his computer, the New Zealand native may have expected to find some second-hand music left over from the previous owner. Instead, he found 60 files whose point of origin was the U.S. military.

According to TVNZ, the files contained information on American troops currently serving in Afghanistan, as well as information on troops who had previously served in Iraq. The info on the device included active phone numbers, deployed equipment details, as well as information pertaining to specific soldiers, including Social Security numbers and medical records. Many of the folders on the device also contained a warning, saying dissemination of the enclosed info was punishable under U.S. Federal law.

While the safety of the world may not rest on the information contained in said MP3 player, this kind of irresponsibility regarding the personal information of U.S. troops is sure to cause a ruckus.

"One of the first rules of military endeavor is not to give the opposition anything whatsoever that they could use to compromise your position, in any way at all," says Peter Cozens, an expert on Strategic Studies at Victoria University. "This is just slack administrative procedures which are indeed a cause of embarrassment. And it's the sort of thing which ought not really to be in the public domain."

The U.S. government is not commenting on the matter.