http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/443144.html By Roni Singer and Tsahar Rotem June 25, 2004 The thief who stole a laptop containing sensitive information on undercover police agents was apparently unaware of its contents, so the information probably remains uncompromised, police sources said yesterday. Nevertheless, Major General Ilan Franco, the head of the police intelligence division, yesterday ordered all operations involving undercover agents frozen until Sunday, to enable further examination of the data in the laptop and its possible ramifications. The laptop was stolen overnight Tuesday from the Herzliya residence of a police psychologist working for the intelligence department. The thieves also took the officer's car, which bore police license plates, and various other items. The laptop was recovered in the West Bank city of Tul Karm less than 24 hours later. Contrary to previous reports, the Shin Bet security service was not involved in the recovery. The Sharon District Police intelligence unit maintains its own network of contacts in the West Bank, primarily in Tul Karm and Qalqilyah, as stolen goods from that part of Israel often end up in that part of the territories. This network was activated to discover the laptop's whereabouts. The intelligence unit's sources soon located the laptop in Tul Karm, and at that point, the effort to recover it began. The police's informants in the territories employed intermediaries to offer to buy the computer from the thief, so that neither the thief nor the intermediaries would know the police force was the real customer. Police said no negotiations were held over the price; the buyer was simply instructed to pay the asking price, which was NIS 5,000. Sources in the intelligence unit insisted yesterday that no sensitive information was stored on the laptop: it contained psychological evaluations of current and potential agents, but these included neither the agents' names nor any other identifying details, and also gave no details of their methods of operation. Other senior police officers, however, said this was not uniformly true; some of the evaluations did contain names or other identifying details. Nevertheless, the police got lucky: The thief apparently wiped the computer's memory almost immediately so he would be able to sell it as new. This means the information was very probably not compromised, and also indicates that the laptop was not stolen for its information, but was merely taken in the course of an ordinary theft. This theory is also bolstered by the modest price for which the thief sold it back. "If he had known [how important it was], the price would have been much higher," said one police source. Police intelligence sources added that they have received no information indicating that any of the agents is in danger. Nevertheless, they said, there is as yet no guarantee that the thief did not copy the information before erasing it. Police were apparently able to reconstruct the wiped memory files, so the missing data will not impair future police operations. Police are now seeking to arrest the thief and his accomplices. They have not yet decided whether to file disciplinary charges against the psychologist for keeping sensitive information at home instead of securing it properly. _________________________________________ ISN mailing list Sponsored by: OSVDB.org - For 15 cents a day, you could help feed an InfoSec junkie! (Broke? Spend 15 minutes a day on the project!)
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