James Bond Online: the strange tale of MI6, Facebook and eBay

Davey Winder
Tuesday, 30 September 2008 15:13

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

This is where the Secret Intelligence Service does not, quite frankly, live up to its name. Perhaps Not-So-Secret Stupidity Service would be more appropriate?

According to the BBC it would appear that police are currently investigating how a digital camera ended up being sold on eBay.

Which would be a pretty crap investigation if it were not for one thing.

The camera, it is claimed by the 28 year old man who bought it for UKP £17, had belonged to an agent of MI6 and still had images of terror suspects in the memory.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that there is an investigation underway, but refuses to comment on whether the Nikon Cool Pix camera was sold by an agent or not.

There is no comment as to the nature of the photographs either, which were discovered when the buyer downloaded some holiday snaps he had taken after buying the camera.

Imagine his surprise when amongst the family members on beach shots there were such things as pictures of rocket launchers and missiles!

As UK breaches of security and data go, this appears to be fairly tame. After all, currently the Ministry of Defence is trying to fight off flak over three unencrypted hard drives containing personal data of all current and former members of the Royal Air Force which went missing recently.

"There is no indication that the theft was motivated by a desire to obtain the data, nor that the data has been exploited maliciously in any way" the Ministry of Defense said in a statement "But personal information on anyone serving or who has served in recent years in the RAF, regular or reservist, may have been compromised."

Oh, well that's OK then...