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Riot squad USB disk found on pavement

Police lose strategic anti-terrorist data on a memory stick.

By Eric Doyle, 7 Sep 2010 at 13:29

The Greater Manchester Police force is investigating the discovery of one of its own USB drives in a street in Stalybridge.

The memory stick contained unencrypted, detailed information about public disorder and counter-terrorism activities.

A businessman handed in the drive to the Daily Star on Sunday after he picked it up from the pavement outside Stalybridge police station. The casing was stamped with the initials of the Greater Manchester Police Public Order Training Unit and held 2,000 pages of confidential information.

The files were published by the National Police Improvement Agency as a guide for counter-terrorism and tactical deployment. Sections covered strategies for acid and petrol bomb attacks, blast control training and the use of batons and shields. In the hands of terrorists, this would have been valuable information enabling them to anticipate how the police would react to their activities.

There data also gave the names of key police officers, their ranks and divisions, stated the finder after he had examined the disk on his laptop.

"We are currently looking into who this device belongs to, what information is contained on it and the circumstances surrounding its loss. As such it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time,” Superintendent Bryan Lawton of GMP's Specialist Operations Branch told the Daily Star on Sunday,

The discovery follows a report from the Liberal Democrats at the end of last month following a request for information to the Scottish Parliament. This revealed that Strathclyde Police had lost a USB stick containing details of current investigations. It also disclosed the sad record of the loss of a memory stick, four PDA memory cards and a laptop over three years by the Lothian and Borders Police.

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1 comments

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Encryption of information should be mandatory

Aside from the obvious security issues exposed within this article, what is equally frustrating is the point that organisations do not seem to be learning from each other’s mistakes. It is possible for information stored externally, such as on a usb stick, to be encrypted automatically as it is saved, therefore if it falls into the wrong hands, it is then rendered useless. As an IT Managed Services company, MSC offer data encryption; protecting clients' confidential information. In addition to this, we also advise that employee's only have access to the precise information necessary for the task in hand. The sheer volume within this one usb demonstrates that this practice was not used. One would also have to ask why this information was required to be removed in the first place. Employees should also be educated on company Infosec policy regarding the use of information, particularly when the information is so vital (for example crowd control plans), therefore the potential for human error should be reduced. As the technology is available, organisations should be employing all methods possible to protect not only theirs, but their customers information too. If a reputation is threatened then the amount of faith held with that organisation is significantly reduced.

By MSC_247 on Tuesday Sep 7

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