Man finds US Army confidential data on MP3 Wednesday, December 1, 2010

It sounds like the opening line to a bad joke. And this case was a bad joke -- for the Pentagon. Chris Ogle of New Zealand was in Oklahoma about a year ago when he bought a used MP3 player from a thrift store for $9. A few weeks ago, he plugged it into his computer to download a song, and he instead discovered confidential US military files. "The more I look at it, the more I see, and the More.. less I think I should be," Ogle said with a nervous laugh in an interview with TVNZ. The files included the home addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers of US soldiers. The player also included what appeared to be mission briefings and lists of equipment deployed to hot spots in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the information appears to date to 2005. The New Zealand journalist who first reported the story was able to contact at least one of the soldiers by dialing a phone number found in the files. He hung up once she explained why she was calling. Video Watch how man discovered secret military files » Pentagon officials told CNN that they are aware of the MP3 player, but can't talk about it until investigators confirm that the information came from the US Department of Defense. "The government isn't doing a good job of protecting the information that it collects," said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. Despite government efforts to protect sensitive information, this is a growing problem, privacy experts say. Two years ago ...



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