(Washington Post) NATO allies will be relieved at the Dutch decision to deploy extra troops to Afghanistan Thursday but dismayed at The Hague's carelessness with sensitive data. Just hours after the Dutch parliament voted by a large majority to send 1,400 troops to support a NATO-led peacekeeping operation in the volatile southern province of Afghanistan, media in The Hague revealed that top-secret information had been left in a rented car for the second time in as many months.In December, a member of the Dutch secret service left computer discs containing highly sensitive information in a lease car.The discs were subsequently sent to a well-known investigative reporter who broadcast some of the data on television. Dutch newspapers Friday reported a second embarrassing slip for security services in the Netherlands, which has prevaricated about whether to send extra troops to Afghanistan for over two months.According to the NIS news agency, an army captain who spent five months in Afghanistan last year left a USB stick containing highly sensitive information about Dutch military movements in a rental car.
The captain has since been suspended after it was discovered two boys who found the stick copied the data onto their computers. Labor lawmaker Frans Timmermans railed that "the defense organization is as leaky as a sieve," while conservative members of parliament said allies might be reluctant to share classified information with military and intelligence services that have proved so leaky.
4 comments:
heeeheeeeheee!
Perhaps the saddest thing about this is that if the United States had stepped back and allowed the UN and NATO to use diplomacy instead of just US military might, the region would be probably be more stable and Dutch peacekeeping could have been transparent instead of top secret...
Wonder if they lose their credit cards and pin numbers, too?
The US doesn't want diplomacy; the US doesn't want the UN to lead. The US wants war and wants to dominate the world, establish an empire. I grieve for my country.
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