from the but-the-cabinet-was-locked-your-Honour! dept.
Filing cabinets containing thousands of classified documents from the Australian government ended up being sold at a secondhand shop, prompting government officials Wednesday to launch an investigation into how the highly sensitive documents were disposed of.
The cache of documents was obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which reported the two cabinets were sold by a Canberra furniture shop at a discount price because they were locked and no one could find keys." http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/01/31/top-secret-files-left-in-filing-cabinets-sold-at-second-hand-shop.html
Nearly all the files are classified, some as "top secret" or "AUSTEO", which means they are to be seen by Australian eyes only.
But the ex-government furniture sale was not limited to Australians — anyone could make a purchase. And had they been inclined, there was nothing stopping them handing the contents to a foreign agent or government.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:17PM (8 children)
I hope nobody found out the docs detailing how the whole "Everything in Australia will kill you" is just an elaborate plot to save hundreds of billions in military spending.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)
I’ve had this very cynical idea for a while now. And that is, the only way we will get governments to stop this nonsense is if we democratize the extreme tax evasion... ahem ahem.. sorry, “smart tax planning” that these companies take advantage of.
If you make it so an individual can pay $50 a month and they get this full double Dutch Irish sandwich shell company crap setup for them, and millions of citizens start to get incomes this way and pay their “lawful amount” rather than their fair share, then governments will start to clamp down.
Because right now we (private citizens who pay 25-40% in income taxes) are powerless in convincing our governments to do something about this travesty.
Thoughts? Remember, as these companies say with their weasel words “we pay the full taxes we owe!” So it would be legal.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DECbot on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:05PM
I wish shills would use their journals instead of cluttering the articles. What does classified documents in a locked dresser sold at a pawn shop have to do with codified tax evasion? "I'm fed up with classified documents sold in locked filing cabinet! So, I'm not giving any more taxes to the man! Fuck schools! Fuck roads! Fuck clean drinking water! I want to live in a shithole until these filing cabinet crises stop!"
If you don't want to appear to be a shill. Connect your argument to TFA, or TFS, or at minimum the parent post. So, tell me again how setting up a tax evasion service is related to classified Australian documents sold in a filing cabinet? Or related to the notion that everything is Australia will fucking kill you? At least provide a link for your service, fuck if I'm going to bother googling for it.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:27PM (5 children)
Funny thing. My wife was talking to an Australian woman who moved to Texas and they were worried about the dangerous snakes, spiders, etc. that live here.
Sure, in Texas we have Rattlesnakes of various types, Copperheads, Cotton Mouths (Water Moccasins), Coral Snakes, Black Widows, Brown Recluses, Centipedes and Scorpions, but I've only seen one Rattlesnake, one Copperhead, one Cotton Mouth, 0 Coral Snakes, a couple of Black Widows or so. You shouldn't really be afraid of those. I did accidentally misidentify a harmless snake once, that one still got shot, though. Now, I have seen an Unknown number of Brown Recluses, Centipedes, and scorpions. The Brown Recluses, because any brown smudge is kinda hard to identify after the shoe hits them. Centipedes and Scorpions aren't too bad, though the scorpions are more likely to be in your house.
Ah, and no article about venomous creepy crawlies in Texas is complete without mentioning the Awful, Awful, Fire Ants. They're everywhere and you really, really, want to stay away from the mounds. Creepy fact, I found masses of Fire Ants under my pillow in two different houses in Texas. How? Why? What in the world?!? Both nights were not particularly fun nights, but at least my wife has always been paranoid about creepy crawlies in bed. So, I check everything every night. I don't complain about it anymore either.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Touché) by krishnoid on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:45PM (3 children)
Maybe she's worrying about the wrong things in Texas?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:06PM (2 children)
What, you're supposed to man-handle a Cotton Mouth? Yes, a snake stick is a useful tool, no I'm not going to get that close to a venomous snake. No City Limits, No Animal Control.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday February 02 2018, @09:58PM (1 child)
So just leave it alone.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 05 2018, @03:42PM
That's what I do with snakes that aren't close to my house and thus, my 2 year old. The 2 yr old won't just leave it alone.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:47PM
I used to have black widows at the bottom of the walls all around my house. About one every 2 to 3 feet. Nocturnal crawling bugs didn't stand a chance of ever getting in.
Took me a while to wipe them out. Not much i can do to prevent new ones from taking their place. I'm down to squashing a few per month (maybe two, on average).
I'm glad they don't have secret filing cabinets on me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:18PM (1 child)
Or anonymously to wikileaks!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday February 02 2018, @01:05AM
Or just busy bodies.
I positively would have quietly scanned every single one of those documents in, but them in an encrypted database and studied them. Even if I had no intent to publish them, just for the entertainment value alone.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:23PM (2 children)
I doubt the cabinets in a fox news story are related. They look like ordinary cabinets.
At least in the USA, the cabinets are some serious shit. You could call them safes. Some of them weigh 600 pounds empty. Most of the metal is about 1/8 inch thick. The lock drives a 1-inch-diameter hardened steel bar into the sides.
The lock is an X-09, which is a weird electronic spin combo lock. You operate it mostly like an old-style spin lock, but with a few weird differences. To operate, first you spin it maybe a dozen times in order to generate electrical power. Then you enter the combo. You view the combo by looking down at a tiny window on top, making it hard for other people to see. Each time you change direction, the display jumps to a random starting number. If you make too many attempts, it delays you for a while. If you are "too perfect", like an R2D2 robot breaking into a shield generator on a forest moon, it delays you for a while. The lock is pretty much designed to piss people off. Usually, each drawer has its own lock.
Drilling to get into the safe is awful. We had it done. It takes 8 hours and wears out 2 tungsten-carbide hole cutter bits. Meanwhile, since the person drilling is unlikely to have authorization to look inside the cabinet, some other miserable person has to sit there (likely in a cramped little room with no internet or phone) with their ears plugged. After 8 hours of loud drilling, you get to open the filing cabinet.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:44PM
"We discovered that we could cut a lot of hassle and expense by changing this cumbersome storage, and uploaded all those docs to The Cloud. Coincidentally, my brother-in-law and nephew just started a company providing Cloud services for about half of the price of AWS or Azure"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:24PM
I once bought a truck load of government surplus desks from a state government to use in a computer training lab.
The State had got them from the Navy. Built like battle ships. Four guys to loan each desk onto the truck.
No papers inside, secret or otherwise.
Another time we got a pallet of computers from same state government surplus. They were said to have
no hard drives for confidentiality reasons. But they all had de-cabled hard drives inside, which booted up just
fine when re-cabled. Lots of interesting things on them. Some porn. Lots of email and documents.
All boring stuff.
The drives were too small for our purpose, so we sledge-hammerd them and installed new ones.
Never even bothered to tell the State. No reason to get someone fired. All sales final.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:34PM
You're through, Soup Nazi!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:09PM (2 children)
AUSTEO.... Does that mean that Australia's intelligence services are bad
to the bone?
*rimshot*
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:15PM (1 child)
No, I think it means all Australians are part of their intelligence service.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:24PM
Not all of them.
Only the ones with OSTEO, mate, only those.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @08:21PM (2 children)
Good old typewriter documents. These days the data is sent directly to TelAviv without delay for safe keeping.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:51PM (1 child)
Saying TelAviv (no hyphen?) makes you officially an enemy of the US government.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/trump-countries-jerusalem-move-enemies-180131130537414.html [aljazeera.com]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday February 02 2018, @12:40AM
I have great affection for Israel and its people. It's truly the land of opportunity. Tel Aviv is a tremendous city. Ivanka -- my daughter -- loves it. I planned a beautiful project for Tel Aviv, it was going to be the tallest tower. Trump Tower Tel Aviv. But it never happened. Because the people I was doing it with, Crescent Heights, turned out to be a bunch of crooks. They bought the best location, the Elite chocolate factory in Ramat Gan -- it's Tel Aviv adjacent. Great. But they broke our contract, they sold the land to somebody else. So I sued them. No tower!
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday February 01 2018, @09:56PM (2 children)
and, amazingly, there were no bodies.
So far, just some documents suggesting the Prime Minister if the day may have ignores some advice.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/asio-enters-abc-offices-to-secure-leaked-cabinet-files-20180131-p4yz5x.html [smh.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 02 2018, @02:04AM (1 child)
The bodies are still in the closets. Someone will find them when the govt building a will be sold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday February 02 2018, @08:19AM
Maybe that's why the British MPs have been so reluctant to move out...who knows what will be found when they renovate!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:20PM (1 child)
Someone around here bought a purse from a thrift store and found a white powder in a plastic pouch inside. Police were called and it field-tested positive for cocaine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 02 2018, @12:32PM
Field tests don't mean anything. Damn near anything will field test positive.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:53PM
Yeish. And the thrift stores around here won't even sell old/vintage computers or floppy disks.
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Friday February 02 2018, @05:32AM
Right? Therefore, no security risk.
Was it found in the cellar in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard"?
Easy mistake to make. Especially if the light had gone.