Students buy military secrets for $40

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 24 Jun 2009 at 16:26

A hard disk containing sensitive US military data was bought at a street fair in Ghana, claims a new documentary.

A professor from the University of British Columbia journalism school and three of his students followed the trail of electronic waste from the US and other developed countries, making an investigative film called Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground.

Although the export of electrical waste from many countries is strictly regulated, second-hand computers can be donated to the developing world by charities.

Many computers donated to Africa are in working order, but a huge amount are completely unusable, claim the group. They suggest that much of this broken technology ends up on huge dumps such as Agbogbloshie in Ghana. What components can be salvaged are sold in street fairs nearby.

It was at one of these fairs that the group bought seven working hard disks for $40. They attempted to recover data from them in order to find out where they had come from.

"We plugged them in and started reading files. They were just sitting there," said Peter Klein, who teaches the international reporting course, speaking to CBC News.

One of the drives contained information about multi-million dollar US military contracts, says the group, while another had personal details and photographs belonging to a family in the UK.

Despite the security issues raised in their documentary, the group say that the real danger is humanitarian and environmental.

"The big picture here is that there are thousands of tonnes of toxic waste - because we want the newer computer, newer TV, or the newer cellphone - being sent and poisoning children in Ghana," said one of the students from the group, Blake Sifton.

The completed documentary is due to be broadcast in the US on the public channel PBS.