CBC: B.C. students buy sensitive U.S. defence data for $40 in Africa

[tuvor]

A hard drive containing information about multimillion dollar U.S. defence contracts was obtained in Ghana by a group of Vancouver journalism students as they probed what happens to developed nations' discarded and donated electronics.

"It 's pretty shocking," said Blake Sifton, one of three UBC graduate students who purchased the device containing information related to contracts between the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and the military contractor Northrop Grumman, reported University of British Columbia journalism school. The hard drive cost just $40.

"You'd think a security contractor that constantly deals with very secret proprietary information would probably want to wipe their drives," Sifton said Tuesday.

He visited Ghana for 10 days in February with classmates Heba Elasaad and Krysia Collyer and professor Dan McKinney while making the documentary "Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground" for an international reporting course.

...

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/23/tech-e-waste-ghana-data-british-columbia-journalism-students.html

[derby378]

1. PDFs! PDFs! My kingdom for some PDFs!

:bounce:

[Buzz Clik]

2. $40 for a used hard drive in Ghana? These kids need to learn to bargain shop.

[lindisfarne]

3. Northrop Grumman declined to be interviewed by the students, but said it was looking into how the ha

hard drive got to the Ghanaian market, and asked the students to return it, which they did not.

==
Good thing they're Canadian. (quotes from article at link in #1)
===

"Based on the documents we were shown, we believe this hard drive may have been stolen after one of our asset-disposal vendors took possession of the unit," the company said, adding that "no company can inoculate itself completely against crime."

==
One would hope they could if they're dealing in sensitive information. Seems to me a hammer or steam roller would do the trick.

Or this:
==
Nevertheless, Walji doesn't think it's necessary to destroy the hard drive.

...

He said high-level data wiping methods that write over the old data should be sufficient.