How not to run a spy operation (hint: Facebook is involved)
What an idiot -- from the
London Daily Mail:
MI6 chief blows his cover as wife's Facebook account reveals family holidays, showbiz friends and links to David Irving
The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying operations abroad.
But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.
Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account, making it visible to any of the site's 200 million users who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network - regardless of where in the world they actually were.
There are fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder may have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.
Lady Shelley Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law - who holidayed with him last month - is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian David Irving.
Immediately after The Mail on Sunday alerted the Foreign Office to the astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material � which could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists - was removed from the internet.
Gaaa -- of course the offending information was removed from the facebook site but what about Google Cache or The Internet Wayback Machine. Talk about not taking a job seriously...
Posted by DaveH at July 5, 2009 4:41 PM