Some people express concerns about privacy in an age where every intrusion (even something as inane as searching a backpack at a high school football game) is justified in the name of 'security.' These people are usually denounced as 'chicken littles,' whiners who do nothing more than harass those trying to protect us from [insert Evil Doer of the week].
Yet look at what's happening in Afghanistan.
The Los Angeles Times reported top secret military computer hard drives were easily available for purchase at an Afghan marketplace near Bagram airbase, the biggest US base in the country.
The paper discovered that drives [were] for sale at the bazaar contained documents marked "secret" and that they also listed the names and Social Security numbers of nearly 700 U.S. service members. In addition, they included discussions of U.S. efforts to "remove" or "marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered "problem makers."
These concerns are hardly pedantic in an age where identity theft is hardly uncommon. If authorities can't even protect their own top secret data, then how can we trust them to protect your Social Security number and my credit history?
Then again, 'top secret' isn't what it used to be.
That news is pathetic and scary all at the same time.
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