Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Is Incompetence A Crime?


When there is nothing you can do about a situation and your only option is to laugh or cry, I'll choose laughing every time.

The old mystery adage of learning about someone by examining their garbage, where the rumpled detective picks through a soggy bag of coffee grounds and credit card receipts, still holds true. It's been upgraded to keep with our technological times but e-waste spills its secrets just as certainly as a broken bottle of cyanide.

Very recently a group of journalism students from the University of British Columbia, was visiting Africa to make a documentary on digital dumping. They purchased some garbage hard drives very cheaply and discovered that US defense data popped up on the screen when they plugged it in.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/23/tech-e-waste-ghana-data-british-columbia-journalism-students.html

Someone's not paying attention. They won't be laughing when the powers that be find out who didn't wipe the hard drive, but me ... well really ... what choice is there?

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