The Globe and Mail reports that students at the University of British Columbia, “discovered intact hard drives containing secret international security data and personal information at a digital dumping ground in Ghana.”

[The students' teacher, Peter Klein], a producer for the PBS television program Frontline and an Emmy Award winning journalist, said the drives included information about U.S. Homeland Security and Pentagon defence contracts as well as social security numbers, credit card numbers, and family photos. [...]

The findings are part of a project by Mr. Klein’s graduate students investigating electronic waste, or e-waste. The team also travelled to Guiyu, China, and India, piecing together the afterlife of discarded computers, drives and parts. [...]

While there’s no way to know if the data has been used to commit crimes, Mr. Klein said that criminal gang members have been seen combing the debris.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 and is filed under Identification, International, Security, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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