It's a situation we've all fantasized or feared: we buy a camera for a mere thirty bills on Ebay and it turns out the camera is formerly the property of a secret agent... is he going to come kill you or ask politely for his memory card back?
- An anonymous bidder ended up with a still SLR camera for a mere 17 English quid, then checked to see what the previous owner had left behind...
- A document marked "top secret" that detailed an MI6 encrypted computer system
- Pictures of rocket launchers and missiles
- A hand-drawn graphic revealing links between active al-Qaeda cells, including names and occupations of suspected terrorists
- Information about Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of al-Qaeda’s highest-ranking lieutenants, who was captured by the CIA in 2007 and is currently being held at Gitmo. [Tech-Ex]
If we had found this, we would have immediately sent it back to the guy saying that we couldn't figure out how to turn it on, then promptly change our address and move all our relatives out of the country. Luckily, this story has a happy ending... so far...
Turns out, the police didn't believe our hero, turning him away...
Yet within days Special Branch, the team of specialist anti-terror officers based in every county force, descended on his humble terraced home.
They took away the camera and the family’s PC and spent £1,000 replacing them.
Officers banned the shocked family from talking to the media.
Guess the one-grand wasn't enough to cover those expenses (only a thousand?) Apparently, the Sun in the UK pays a whole lot better for info than MI6 pays for desktop computers...
Via the Sun.
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