Computer thief detained

In the US, military investigators have managed to find two notebooks with secret files, which disappeared several days ago from the headquarters of US military leadership in Tampa, Florida.

The notebook thief has been detained. This was reported on Friday by the chairman of the Armed Force special investigation department, Mike Richmond.

While carrying out the investigation, many people were interrogated, and one of them confessed, Richmond reported.

According to Richmond, the detained person worked for the military institution and had access to the territory where the computers were kept. The name and the rank of the thief are not being released. He kept the stolen computers at home.

The Americans love for computers (especially, for somebody’s else computers) cannot be explained rationally: scandal with the 400 computers that were stolen from the US Justice Departmen Justice and belonged to the FBI and INS. Nobody can say where they are. While information they contain is not meant for the public.

Now, some figures from the US Customs Service. An inspection discovered that, within three years, the Customs Service lost, for unknown reasons, 2,251 computers. Moreover, 72 pistols and 613 identification documents of customs workers disappeared. To compare: today, 19 thousand US customs workers use 39,799 computers and 29,106 pistols.

The direct damage from these losses makes over $700,000. In the lost computers, there could be secret information about an order and working methods of the service, about movement of loads, etc.

Law-enforcement bodies are afraid of the criminals and terrorists using these documents as weapons to carry out terrorist acts. One of the lost pistols has been used already by gangsters to settle a score.

Dmitry Chirkin PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/10/45503.html