US airbase e-mails go to town web- BBC

[Yrys]

Someone must be bitting his fingers, now ...


Last Updated: Tuesday, 4 March 2008, 16:43 GMT
Mildenhall is a major base for the US air force

Confidential US Air Force (USAF) e-mails, some including flight plans for a presidential visit, have been mistakenly sent to a tourism website.

The e-mails were meant to go to the US airbase at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk, via its website. But instead they went to a town tourism website which had a
similar address. The USAF said it had sent out an e-mail advising contacts, family and friends of airmen based at the site to use the correct address.

Gary Sinnott, of Mildenhall, set up the website "mildenhall.com" in the late 1990s to promote the town. But by 2001 he was starting to get hundreds of e-mails
meant for people at the airbase.

Flight plans

The e-mails included jokes, spam, personal information and military information. He said he contacted the base a number of times, but officials told him not
to worry about it. But on one occasion, he said, when he told an official at the base about receiving information about presidential flight plans, the official "went nuts".

"That kind of information is not meant to be passed out to Joe Public," Mr Sinnott said. He added that another e-mail he received was about US "military procedures
and tactics". "It had the notice 'Destroy by any means to prevent capture'," he said. Mr Sinnott has now decided to take his website down to avoid getting these messages.

A spokesman for the USAF said: "In 2004, The 100 Communication Squadron advised Mr Sinnott to block unrecognizable addresses from his domain and have
an auto-reply sent reminding people of the official Mildenhall domain."

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On Telegraph :

US military secrets sent to Suffolk tourist site

Agents from the USAF Office of Special Investigations have visited Mr Sinnott to ask him to delete any classified material he may have received,
but concerns have been raised that resourceful terrorists could use similar methods to fool the US military into revealing state secrets.

Personally, I would have taken the hard drive and give back his informations  and files on a new one. But maybe they didn't publicize everything...