Air Force Emails Sensitive Information to Tourism Site

Khuffie writes "The US Air Force has been sending sensitive information, including flight plans for Air Force One, to a website promoting the town of Mildenhall in Suffolk. When told of the error by the site's owner, the Air Force did not attempt to fix it at first. When reminded at a later time, instead of fixing the issue, they advised the owner to 'block unrecognizable addresses from his domain and have an auto-reply sent reminding people of the official Mildenhall domain and blocked his website from access on base.'"

Re:The Airforce...

[megla]

I'm guessing being emailed confidential deployment plans and the route for Airforce 1 would get them off to a good start!

I have call this one BS

[Perl-Pusher]

I spent 20 years in the Air Force. All DOD domains end in .mil not .com. We only have this persons word, didn't see one example. Flight plans via email. Crap! the DOD uses a device called KG-58 its an encryption device. The key is sent via courier every month. That is the only approved way to send any sensitive information.

"It had the notice 'Destroy by any means to prevent capture'," Right, that's absolute crap. One that is not the correct wording. Two its an electronic message, its on your hard drive. Did his computer explode after reading it? I'm sure there are idiots who sent things to his domain. But these just could not be official communications. There are way too many safeguards in place.

People from government ministry of finance offices in African Nations are always send me stuff too.

Lets see some real proof!

Re:OPSEC and COMSEC

[qoncept]

They blocked access from military computers. You can read what the slut next door is doing from home, but at work you're supposed to work. If they blocked something useful, you say "hey, I need to read this web page" and they unblock that one. Smart Filter can be funny though. They blocked wikipedia. Category? "Education/Reference"

Re:I have call this one BS

[DragonFodder]

I agree completely with you, wish I had mod points to give you.

and unless things have changed drastically in the years since I left the Air Force, all secure communications go across a dedicated network, in most cases that being a dedicate point to point comm line. Nothing of any official sensitive nature would go out on the civilian internet.

If this proves true, on the data, then there is someone looking for a courts martial offense in mis handling secret and above information.

Re:The Airforce... Whooa...

[davidsyes]

There *could* be a *WO*man in the office someday.

Personally, when I was in uniform and when I was taken in hand for criticizing a sitting president (84-88, and this happened around 86) I was told (or probably given an implied order) to RESPECT THE MAN IN OFFICE. To hell with that. If an idiot or dunce is in office, call a spade a spade. But, if fools someday (or in the past) take/took office, it would be tragic to not challenge that. I take GREAT offence at being told to unwaveringly GIVE my support for *the president*. If ANY president kills for power or destabilizes governments for control and so on, and tries to assign to that act my name... well, screw that, and SCREW HIM/HER. I have a bigger world view, and it doesn't allow for individual countries to call the shots for all the rest. EVER.

Well, unless you're in Russia. But, hey, even in Russia today, SOME permission is allowed to criticize the government. It just might not get printed.

Re:The Airforce...

[Scrameustache]

it is just basically mass chaos, which either U.S. military intelligence either knew or should have known would happen in a country splintered and segregated along ethnic, religious and cultural divisions.

Now now, NO ONE could have known it would turn into a quagmire [youtube.com].