Headlines:

Another data breach as laptop is stolen
Laptop thefts pose real government data risk
ID fraud soars with laptops targeted for data
Royal News Diana Inquiry Laptop Stolen
Irony knows no bounds: Official
Laptop stolen from Corelli author
Staff Bank Details on Stolen Laptop
Doctor’s Research Stolen on Laptop
Police ‘give up’ on theft from cars
There goes your laptop
Thieves Target Laptops
Golden Officer is reprimanded for laptop blunder
Big Increase in Business Crime
Watch Out! There are Laptop thieves about
Defence Minister's Laptop PC is stolen
City Diary
Script Thieves after Phil Mitchell's Killer
Computer Ring is Smashed by Yard
Spies Get James Bond Briefcases to Beat Laptop Thieves
Laptop Stolen From Naval Expert
Whitehall Admits it has Lost 35 Laptops
Spy Lesson No. 1: Don’t Lose Your Laptop
FBI Loses 449 Guns and Laptop Secrets
M15 Secret Laptop Stolen at Tube Station

The Independent 13th October 2008
Another data breach as laptop is stolen

A leading rail union called today for an urgent inquiry after a laptop containing personal details of 150,000 workers in the industry was stolen.

The computer was in a bag taken from an employee of Deloitte which until recently was the external auditor for rpmi, which administers railway pension schemes.

A helpline has been set up for members of several railway pension schemes although the company stressed that the data on the laptop did not contain bank account details and said there were a number of security measures in place.

But Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff Association, said there should be an inquiry because of the large number of people whose personal details have been lost.
"We are extremely concerned that this personal information affecting well over 100,000 people has gone missing.

"All we have received are bland assurances that everything is going to be all right.
"There will be a lot of worried railway employees who will be concerned about where this information will eventually end up. We need to know precisely what information has gone missing and how security will be sharpened in the future."

Mr Doherty also complained that the computer was stolen weeks ago but the union was only told about the incident in the past few days.

A spokesman for Network Rail said: "Deloitte and our pension scheme administrator have made us aware of the security breach caused by the theft of a laptop.
"We have been given assurances that security measures were in place to protect the data but are investigating this incident as a matter of course."

The laptop is the latest in a number to be stolen or lost including those belonging to the Government and Armed Forces.

Silicon.com 4th August 2006
Laptop thefts pose real government data risk

A Freedom of Information enquiry by silicon.com has uncovered the number of laptops stolen from key UK government departments over the past year, raising questions and concerns about sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

The worst affected department was the Ministry of Defence. It reported 21 laptops were stolen between July 2005 and July 2006.

The Home Office in total suffered 19 stolen laptops over the past year. Perhaps most worrying among those losses were four laptops stolen from the Identity and Passport Service. The Core Home Office unit suffered seven stolen laptops, while HM Prison Service had eight laptops stolen.

The Department of Trade and Industry told silicon.com it had 16 laptops stolen over the past year, while the Department for Work and Pensions reported it had nine laptops stolen. The Department of Health said it had lost 18 laptops, though couldn't clarify whether these were lost or stolen.

A submission from Defra, which lost 17 laptops, suggested government laptops are predominantly given out to senior members of staff at the departments. These are individuals in some cases likely to have access to the most sensitive information. The rural affairs agency named all staff who had lost laptops, including a number of senior managers and heads of division.

Experts who work with organisations to assess the level of risk they face following the loss or theft of laptops, have told silicon.com the fact these laptops are at large could present a serious risk of data theft, which should concern UK citizens.

Bryan Sartin, VP investigative response at CyberTrust, said laptops are the number one source of data theft across organisations largely due to the fact the owners have already done the hard part - taking data outside the four walls and the protected digital perimeter of the organisation.

He said any organisation that accesses sensitive information should consider itself a target.
Once the laptop has fallen into the wrong hands, getting into it and accessing sensitive data is relatively easy, according to Peter Wood, from penetration testing company First Base Technologies.

Wood said 90 per cent of stolen laptops are probably accessible within 10 minutes and even many of those with more sophisticated levels of encryption can still be accessed within three hours.
He added: "We see laptops with supposedly stronger security in place, such as smartcard authentication, but these are still trivially easy to overcome.

"Once you are onto the laptop it is possible to get all the passwords and use those credentials to access the VPN. You can own the laptop within 10 minutes and own the network shortly after."
Only those laptops with full disk encryption will thwart dedicated data thieves, said Wood.

And many doubt government departments will have levels of sophisticated security in place which even more advanced private sector organisations have been slow to adopt.

Silicon.com 29 March 2006
ID fraud soars with laptops targeted for data

An expert investigator into data theft has told silicon.com that a recent spate of stolen laptops and back-up tapes is just the tip of the iceberg and identity theft is dramatically on the up-and-up.

In fact it's become such a problem that Bryan Sartin, VP investigative response at Cybertrust, claims almost everybody's identity will have been subject to some degree of breach, even if it didn't result in fraud.

Where crimes are committed, however, it is largely down to the existence of a highly active market for stolen data, especially bank details, said Sartin who showed silicon.com a number of live websites selling stolen account information from banking customers.

And with fraudsters able to make thousands of dollars per day from stolen data - compared to just a few dollars for the actual hardware - the motivation for targeting data is clear.

But for all the talk of phishing and spyware as a means to obtain such data, it is often physical theft which poses the greatest threat, said Sartin.

He said: "Where really big chunks of data are involved that tends to come from a physical breach at retailers or banks," explaining that breaking in and stealing a laptop is actually often "the path of least resistance". He added that the bulk of large-scale thefts tend to rely on the co-operation of an insider in his experience.

Sartin said: "Most bigger cases do evidence internal collusion," with evidence often including the theft of specifically targeted computers.

The first priority after discovering the loss or theft of a laptop or back-up tape is to assess the threat posed, said Sartin. This is generally where he comes in and works with companies to create a profile of the risk they face.

If a laptop or a box of tapes has been misplaced - with no suggestion of any wrongdoing beyond simple human error - and the data is known to be reasonably secure then the company has a decision to make about the negative versus the positive effects of disclosure.

Sartin said: "Many companies will take a stance of not saying anything until they really have to."

He added that lost devices tend not to result in data fraud, though there are no guarantees.

However, when a specific laptop or back-up batch has been stolen and fears raised that it is the data rather than the device which has been targeted, more companies are wising up to the need to disclose the breach.

In California they are required to do so by law, which Sartin says is a positive move but he believes there are other factors in play.

He said: "In the US it's true that a lot of disclosure is due to California law but also it's down to the pressure of customers; especially if they were to find out later."

But Sartin argues that fraudsters and their need to act quickly, have actually contributed to the reasons companies would disclose breaches. "The last thing the fraudsters want is to walk into a store and try to cash a cheque and have that picked up," he said.

As such the need to decide quickly whether to disclose and the awareness that problems may arise even as they are in discussions, has made companies increasingly err on the side of publicly admitting the breach.

Sartin added: "Fraudsters have actually created an agenda of disclosure."

BBC News 20 August 2004
Laptop stolen from Corelli author
 
The author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin has offered a reward for the return of a stolen laptop containing the first 50 pages of his next novel.

Louis de Bernieres told the Eastern Daily Press the laptop had been taken from his garden shed in Norfolk.

The author was attending the Edinburgh Festival when the burglary happened.

He said he was offering £500 for the laptop's return, and a further reward for information leading to a conviction "of the creeps that stole it". De Bernieres said he now faced having to rewrite the start of the book A Partisan's Daughter.

"I felt stupid for forgetting to bring the laptop in with me. I think I had been meaning to go back down there," he told the Eastern Daily Press about the theft.

"They also got all my garden tools which is a pain at this time of year."

Silicon.com 23 September 2004
Irony knows no bounds: Official
 
Police are investigating a theft at the Gartner IT Security Summit after the laptop of one attendee was stolen from the exhibition in London.

The portable computer belongs to identity management firm Netegrity and was taken from behind the firm's stand on the vendor floor of the Summit held at the Hilton Metropole on Edgware Road.

A spokesman for Netegrity said: "You tend to think that people attending an event of that kind
would not do something like that. [The salesman whose laptop was stolen] saw somebody suspicious who didn't look like one of the crowd and thought he should report it, but didn't."

The firm later reported the incident to the police, who are now investigating the matter.

A spokeswoman for Gartner said: "There was a personal briefcase stolen that went missing at the conference. [The police] are looking at CCTV to see if they can catch the culprit. People are urged to take care of their belongings."

Warnings about keeping tight-hold of laptops, especially work laptops which may contain sensitive information, have been rife in the security industry for years - but it would appear the message hasn't quite got through.

Southend Evening Echo June 11 2004
Staff Bank Details on Stolen Laptop
 
A laptop computer with confidential details of more than 1400 Southend Council staff has been stolen. Information on its hard drive included bank details, National Insurance numbers, birth dates and payroll numbers. The laptop was in the car of a contractor employed to upgrade the Civic Centre computer systems. Council management alerted workers to the theft by email yesterday advising them to warn banks.

The laptop was taken from the car of a Northgate Information Solutions worker

BBC News, 15.1.2003
Doctor’s Research Stolen on Laptop
 
A doctor whose lifetime research was lost when his laptop computer was stolen has begged the thief to send back his work. Potentially life-saving data was kept on Dr Abdul Karim Duke's computer - a Del Espiron 8000 - which has no back-up copy. The laptop was taken from an office at Glenfield Hospital while Dr Duke was operating in theatre. Dr Duke, who is a children's heart specialist, has said he does not care about the computer but wants the work sent back.

He appealed to the thief: "Look on the desktop on this computer. Take the whole file marked academic - there is a whole folder marked academic. "Copy the whole thing onto CD and just send me the CD whoever has got it." A research project on children with holes in their hearts is on the computer. There are no back-up copies of it and unless it is returned years of painstaking research will have been for nothing. "There are potential live-saving issues here," said Dr Duke. Security officers at Glenfield hospital are studying CCTV tapes.

Sunday Times, 18.8.2002
Police ‘give up’ on theft from cars

The police success rate in solving thefts from cars has fallen to zero for the first time in some parts of Britain, prompting criticism that forces now see the offence as too petty to bother pursuing, writes Tom Robbins.

In Barking and Dagenham in Essex, officers have failed to detect the culprits for any thefts from cars in all but one month since April. In July they did solve a crime, giving a total for the financial year so far of one detection from 544 cases.

In June police in the London boroughs of Kingston upon Thames and Richmond upon Thames also failed to manage a single detection. In parts of Nottingham, Liverpool and Leeds, detection rates have also plummeted, with police solving fewer than two crimes in 100 over the past year.
Theft from vehicles is the most common crime in the country. Policing experts say officers in many cities are spending so much time on trying to meet government targets to cut muggings that many non-violent offences are no longer being effectively pursued.

Tracey O’Neill, 36, a learning support assistant from north London, described last week how her car had been broken into eight times in three years. None of the offences has been solved. “When I rang up after the last time, I was told it was no longer police policy to investigate car crime, so there was no point them sending anybody out,” she said. Police chiefs deny they have given up on thefts from vehicles, but officers admit they are being overlooked.

BBC Online, 10.5.2001
There goes your laptop

There are easy pickings for thieves in business parks. Gangs of computer thieves are stealing millions of pounds worth of laptops by simply walking into offices and taking them.
Police believe there could be as many as 100 criminals targeting business parks in Hampshire along the M3 and M4.

The laptops are taken by criminals simply walking in and taking them.
In this office near Fleet, Hampshire two young men simply walked in - when they were challenged by staff they said they were looking for a cleaner called Sarah - in fact they were computer thieves, looking for laptops. The whole operation took less than two minutes. They scoured the building before leaving with three laptops in a case.

Up to 30 laptops can be stolen in one night. As laptop computers are small, expensive and easy to carry out - it's no wonder the thieves go for them. An experienced team came take 20 or 30 laptops like these in a night.

Hampshire police believe organised gangs operating out of Slough and London are responsible. Using the M3 and M4 to hit several offices a night, often scooping up tens of thousands of pounds worth of equipment at a time.

BBC Online 3.5.2001
Thieves target laptops

Business people in Hampshire are risking thousands of pounds in computer equipment and company information by failing to take simple safety measures.

The main targets for thieves are cars outside executive houses, pubs and restaurants - 46 laptops valued at £67,000 have been stolen in the past six months.

More than half of these have been taken from cars parked outside pubs.

Lunchtimes and early evenings are a happy hour for the specialist crooks, who are ready to pounce as soon as executives nip in for a pint.

"Laptop computers are proving to be rich pickings for car thieves and it would only take a few simple precautions to prevent business people from becoming targets." Sgt Doug Dickson, Hartley Wintney police.

Police are advising people to get into the habit of putting their computer into the boot of their car when they leave meetings rather than in view in the pub car park.

Keeping carrying cases and charging adaptors out of view will also keep thieves at bay.

Daily Telegraph, 21.07.2000
'Golden officer' is reprimanded for laptop blunder
By Michael Fleet

A NAVAL officer who left a laptop computer containing confidential files and a sheaf of secret documents in his car overnight woke the next morning to discover the boot broken into and the material missing, a court martial heard yesterday.

Cdr Paul Lloyd, 39, was described as a "golden officer" but broke Ministry of Defence rules when he took the computer and other files out of his office to work on at home without permission and without the necessary precautions. He left the computer and a briefcase containing secret information on the military's Millennium contingency plans in his car in June last year but they were stolen while the vehicle was parked outside his lodgings in Northwood, Middlesex, the court martial heard.

The computer and papers also contained information on operations in Africa. Computer floppy disks and some secret documents were discovered by members of the public on a common in Harrow over the following month but the laptop and a separate hard drive had never been recovered, the court martial at Portsmouth, Hants, was told. The theft and the discovery of some of the papers caused embarrassment to the Navy after newspapers learned of the security breach.

Cdr Lloyd , who was based at the permanent joint headquarters at Northwood, admitted four charges of breaching force security regulations in June 1999. He was given a severe reprimand after senior officers praised his work and said he was destined for high rank. Cdre Robert Bradshaw, president of the court martial panel, told Cdr Lloyd: "We have heard evidence from the highest quarters that you are an officer with an outstanding calibre and record to date. But the error of judgment and ignoring of basic security procedures cannot be overlooked."

The court heard that Cdr Lloyd had been granted early leave on Friday June 25 last year to spend some time with his wife and two young children in Exminster, Devon, and took work away with him. Lt-Cdr Hugh Anderson, defending, said he had intended working on the files but family commitments meant he was unable to and the computer and documents remained in his car when he returned to his lodgings the next day.

He took some work into his rooms but left the laptop and other files in the boot of his car. "On Sunday morning he came out of the flat to find the break-in. He immediately took all the correct actions, informing the authorities and the police," Lt-Cdr Anderson said.

Vice Admiral Jonathan Band, of the defence training review team at the MoD, said: "I was staggered when I first read about this in the newspapers. I thought this cannot be the Lloyd I know." Brig David Richards, of the joint forces HQ, said Cdr Lloyd would have been "bitterly disappointed" about his error of judgment. "He is the sort of bloke we cannot afford not to employ in higher ranks in the future. We have a really golden officer here," he added.

BBC Online, 30.3.2001
Big increase in business crime

A joint campaign is being launched by West Midlands Police and the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce to combat an increase in crimes targetting businesses which has cost companies more than £1.5 million.

A new survey compiled by the Chamber shows that the number of commercial crimes is at an all time high.

Over 70% of companies in Birmingham and Solihull who took part in the study had been hit by crime in the past three years.

Thieves are targetting laptop computers and mobile phones, which are stolen from both the workplace and from people's cars.

Burglary was also a major problem costing companies anything between £1,000 and £25,000.

Earlier in the year Birmingham Online reported on a group of businessmen on an industrial estate in Smethwick who were sleeping on their premises in an attempt to cut the number of break-ins.

West Midlands Police is now issuing companies with CD ROMs advising them on ways in which they can help reduce crime.

Chief superintendent Alan Jones said the survey had highlighted the fact that combating commercial crime was something that needed to be addressed by businesses themselves as well as the police.

Many thousands of laptops vanish in the UK every year. So what can you do to ensure you don't become the next target?

A few weeks ago, a burglar made his way into Jerry Hall's Richmond Hill home and made off with her notebook computer, while the actress was performing in a play in central London.

But the best performance in connection with a laptop computer theft probably occurred a few weeks earlier, when the laptop computer of Irwin Jacobs went walkies. Mr Jacobs is the chief executive officer of Qualcomm, a major American hi-tech company.

Using his laptop, Mr Jacobs had given a presentation at a conference. The theft occurred moments after he left the podium to mingle with the audience. Whoever the thief was, he or she blended in, giving a convincing performance as an ordinary member of the audience or hotel staff.

But was the theft a garden variety laptop heist by someone interested in nothing more than a piece of pricey hardware, or was it corporate espionage? Mr Jacobs' computer contained sensitive proprietary information. In fact, it contained several years' worth of information.

Because of his elevated position, Mr Jacobs may have been a target rather than a random victim. Corporate spying is alive and well, and bounties have been placed on laptops belonging to top executives. Even without a bounty, ordinary laptops of ordinary middle managers contain valuable information - or are suspected of doing so.

No laptop is off-limits, so nobody is off the hook. Many thousands of laptop computers vanish in the UK every year. In the US, the commonly cited figure is 300,000 annually.

More often than not, the value of the hardware is less important than the loss of the data. Confidential corporate data including share-sensitive information can get into the wrong hands, harming your company's competitiveness and wreaking havoc on the share price.

Considerable time and expense may be needed to re-compile data and reinstate it to the replacement computer. Many people keep personal letters and other private matters on their business laptops, including bank, share dealing, tax, accounting and other financial information. Even if the data is backed up, embarrassing and even incriminating information can get into the wrong hands.

"Depending on company policy, it can even be a sackable offence if your laptop is stolen and it contains sensitive material that should not have been in the machine," says David Gamble, executive director of the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (AIRMIC).

No discussion of laptop computer theft is complete without including the circus elements of the problem. Many people absentmindedly leave their laptops behind, in taxis, on trains, in pubs and restaurants.

We also let important data escape into the ether. "I often overhear people discussing contracts and other sensitive issues on mobile phones in public places," says Mr Gamble. "And I am similarly amazed at how often I see people working with notebook computers in places like airplanes where they can easily be overlooked."

The first line of defence, then, is to realise the importance of protecting data as well as protecting the hardware. Shield the data behind a simple password and also with encryption. Such barriers will deter many thieves, and even if they go to the trouble of decoding your data, you can buy valuable time.

Other defensive measures depend on the importance of the data, and how much time and expense you will part with. Some CEOs travel with minders whose job is to constantly watch the computer, not the executive. More typically and sensibly, many of us keep excess data on our laptops which we should simply download or discard.

Just as importantly, we should appreciate and anticipate our various vulnerabilities.

Some underground stations and all airport and train terminals are high risk areas. Different cities and locations pose different kinds and levels of risk. Because of its proximity to inner city residential neighbourhoods, Birmingham's commercial centre, for example, is more susceptible to notebook snatches and other forms of street theft than the City of London.

On the other hand, thieves find plenty of easy pickings in the City and West End from offices during working hours, and pubs and restaurants after work. You and your computer case may make it safely onto your train at Waterloo, Victoria or Euston, but more than a few weary commuters have been caught utterly by surprise when they are pounced upon after arriving at their home station.

We need new attitudes and some of us would benefit from one or more new and occasionally ingenious gizmos.

On the attitude side, never allow yourself to be lulled into a sense of false security. This means keeping your computer on your lap or between your legs rather than on the overhead luggage rack. And if you are travelling alone, take it with you to the loo or whenever you leave your seat. These precepts apply to airplanes as well as trains. If you are going to the boozer after work, leave your notebook in the office. You are not going to get much work done that evening anyway.

In the UK, Fellowes is one of several companies that sell a wide range of cable locks and motion alarm systems priced between £25 and £50. An American company has recently come up with an important variation on the cable lock theme (see box). If you insist on working in airplanes and other public places, 3M makes a Notebook Privacy Filter which clips to your screen and restricts viewing to full frontal. Anyone not on the straight and narrow will be thwarted.

The Independent, 5.6.2000
Defence minister's laptop PC is stolen
By Nick Mead

A laptop computer was stolen from the minister in charge of Britain's nuclear secrets, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday.

A thief smashed a window at the home of the Armed Forces minister, John Spellar, in Bromley, south-east London, on 25 March. The intruder stole the laptop computer but left without touching two red boxes containing potentially sensitive defence information.

The £2,000 computer held only information about the MP's Warley West constituency in the West Midlands, an MoD spokesman said.

Mr Spellar was not at homeat the time of the burglary.

The MoD spokesman said: "A laptop was stolen from Mr Spellar's house but it was only used for constituency business - the sort of information any backbench MP would have.

"There was no MoD-related information on it. Red boxes were in the house but no attempt was made to open or remove them." Mr Spellar also has responsibility for the military's role in Northern Ireland, defence intelligence operations and the MoD police.

Daily Telegraph, 03.02.2001
City Diary

A BREAK-IN at the Evening Standard's Drury Lane office on Thursday night resulted in reporter Robert Lindsay having his bicycle stolen. The intruder also burgled the next door office of Daily Mail horoscope writer Peter Watson, taking his laptop computer.

Watson's column yesterday, written before the burglary, contains this quote from psycholgist Henry Havelock Ellis, whose 142nd birthday it would have been, had he not died in 1939: "The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago . . . had they happened to be within the reach of predatory hands." Who says astrologers just make it all up?

Sunday Times, 16.03.2001
Script thieves after Phil Mitchell's killer
by Allan Ramsay and Richard Simpson

Security surrounding the scriptwriters of EastEnders has been stepped up - after one had her house burgled and computer stolen.

It is feared the robbers were after the top-secret "whodunnit" surrounding the shooting of Albert Square's Phil Mitchell.

The premises in Clapham had been burgled several times before, but in this latest raid thieves made off with computer equipment and a hard disk containing plotlines for the soap
Although none were specifically the Who Shot Phil? plotline, they are for episodes further in the future and it is thought that, as the incident will be referred to in later shows, a "jigsaw" identification of the guilty character is possible. The stolen disk has been security coded, but a persistent hacker could break it.

The burglars are thought to have entered the property through a four-foot hole in the boundary fence which borders a railway line. The scriptwriter involved is said to be very shaken by the theft.

An EastEnders spokeswoman said: "There is always the possibility that the writer has been specifically targeted because of the nature of her work. The plotline for the Phil Mitchell murder is obviously extremely sought after. We cannot rule out that being the reason for the burglary.
"The scriptwriter is not specifically involved with the Phil Mitchell plotline - all the scripts for that are safely under lock and key. However, the fact remains that the scripts are very valuable and a burglar might see that as an incentive to try to steal them.

"We have, therefore, taken advice from the police and private security firms to make sure our scriptwriters do not become victims of a crime like this again."

The BBC is desperate to keep the outcome of the shooting a secret to ensure high viewing figures. It has even shot several different outcomes to make sure the final version is not leaked out.

More than 17million viewers tuned into the episode in which the bullying Phil, played by Steve McFadden, was shot. The storyline is dubbed the biggest TV whodunnit since Dallas's "Who shot JR?".

An EastEnders source said: "The cast are only getting their own scripts. They are not being told anyone else's storylines.

"Not even Phil knows who shot him. It's top secret. But the clever money is on Dan."
In the shooting episode two weeks ago, Phil collapsed in Albert Square after being wounded in the chest. The shooting came hours after the wedding of his one-time lover Mel Healy and club owner Steve Owen.

Over previous weeks, Phil's behaviour had earned him a number of sworn enemies in the square. Things came to a head when alcoholic Phil got drunk at the wedding and one by one the leading contenders for the shooting disappeared, adding to the tension.

The soap and will not reveal the guilty party until early April.

Bookmaker William Hill said there was about £50,000 in bets on who was responsible.
Phil's pregnant ex-girlfriend Lisa is 5/4 favourite. Former part-owner of the Vic, Dan Sullivan is 13/8 and Steve Owen is 4/1.

Others in the frame are Mark Fowler at 7/1, Ian Beale at 10/1 and Mel at 12/1.

Evening Standard, 07.03.2001
Computer theft ring smashed by Yard
by Philip Nettleton

Scotland Yard has smashed a highly-organised burglary ring responsible for stealing thousands of pounds worth of computer equipment from West End offices and hotels.

More than £200,000 of stolen hi-tech equipment was seized during raids in the East End.

Computers, photocopiers, hard drives, lap-tops and monitors were among a haul of 100 items recovered after a lengthy surveillance operation by detectives.
One person has been charged with handling stolen goods and two others have been released on bail.

Police are investigating assets in excess of £1million and Detective Chief Inspector David Peacock, who co-ordinated the raid as part of the Met's Operation Victory, said today: "Thefts from work are a real problem because thieves just walk into offices without anybody challenging them. They are often very confident and then take what they want and nobody says anything to them."

The burglaries from hotels and offices in Westminster cost £7 million per year. In the West End alone the cost totals £3.5 million. Many computers are then "cannibalised" - stripped down and rebuilt with different parts to make them unrecognisable.
Detective Sergeant Matthew Butterworth said: "The computers are stolen to order. This is big business and people in offices and hotels need to be on their guard."

Police recommend marking computers with indelible mark-ers which cannot be rubbed off.

They are also urging staff and cleaners to challenge people they think are acting suspiciously.

Detectives warn that during the summer months, when more windows and doors are left open, the crimes are likely to increase.

Sunday Times, 8.4.2001
Spies get James Bond briefcases to beat laptop thieves
James Clark, Home Affairs Correspondent

SPIES and staff at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) are to be issued with James Bond-style bomb-proof briefcases costing £1,000 each after a series of security lapses in which agents have lost laptop computers containing official secrets.

The MoD plans to buy 15,000 of the armoured cases after a spate of embarrassing incidents in which staff from MI5, MI6 and the armed forces had computers stolen, left them on trains or lost them after drinking sessions. Many of the computers contained secret files and vital names.
The final bill for staff across the world could be up to £35m after the briefcases, which can also destroy data if a thief tries to open them, are adopted by the spy agencies and the Foreign Office. This money is enough to pay the wages of 1,600 police constables or 1,750 nurses for a year.

Officials admitted earlier this year that military and intelligence staff had lost 204 laptops since 1997. The problem became so serious that CIA officials in America complained officially that the record of ineptitude was threatening the sharing of secrets with Britain.

The new briefcases are so strong that they can withstand a Semtex explosion. Designed by the real-life equivalent of "Q" - the eccentric inventor who provided James Bond with his gadgets - the briefcases were ordered after ministers grumbled about the raft of stories of the incompetence and drunkenness among the staff entrusted with secure machines.

The intelligence agencies favour a "de luxe" version which will include an electronic system that wipes the laptop's hard drive if the briefcases are opened without the correct codes.

The briefcases were recently displayed in a private security exhibition at the MoD's Whitehall headquarters. They were passed for use by a secretive group in the Cabinet Office called SEAP (Security Equipment Assessment Panel), which includes members of MI5's protective security division, military experts, MI6 and civil servants.

They appear to be ordinary black briefcases but have false locks on the front. The hardened alloys they are made from would be impossible to cut without power tools and the locks include invisible metal bolts which slide through the front section of the case, making it almost impossible to lever open. Briefcases issued to spies might also include electronic trackers so that they can be traced quickly when they go missing.

An MoD source said: "It got to the point where these things seemed to be disappearing every week and it was an embarrassment. Obviously the cheaper solution would be to ensure that people didn't lose them, but clearly this is the safest way to proceed."

MI5 has cut the issue of laptops after several incidents last year. One machine was snatched at a London railway station and another was left on a train in southern England. A thief was even able to seize a laptop in broad daylight from the Kent home of John Spellar, the armed forces minister.

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Evening Standard, 21.05.2000
Laptop stolen from naval expert

A naval officer has had his laptop stolen in the latest computer mishap for the armed forces and security services, it has been revealed.

The officer, reported to be an intelligence expert, lost the computer and his personal luggage after boarding a train at Paddington station in west London.
The Ministry of Defence have insisted the computer, worth about £2,000, did not contain any classified information.

However, according to The Sunday Times, it held specifications for the next generation of fighter aircraft and details of how they can be controlled from the ground.
The paper claimed the thief sold the computer on to a dealer who then tried to sell the contents of the laptop for £15,000 to a newspaper.

An MoD spokesman said: "The laptop did not contain any classified information and MoD police have been informed.

"Some of the luggage has already been recovered and inquiries are continuing."
The MoD said they believed the incident happened earlier this month.

The laptop is the latest in a series to be lost or stolen by senior military or intelligence personnel.

An MI6 officer left one in a taxi after a night's drinking in a tapas bar in south London and another was snatched when an MI5 officer put it down to buy a ticket from a station.

The Times, 26.5.2000
Whitehall admits it has lost 35 laptops
by Melissa Kite

More than 35 laptop computers have been lost or stolen from government departments since Labour came to power, it emerged last night.

The disclosure, which follows a series of losses by the intelligence services, prompted calls from Tory MPs for an inquiry amid fears that sensitive information had been divulged. Five Whitehall departments admitted in Commons written replies that they had lost track of equipment.

Foreign Office officials reported three laptops "going missing", all of them overseas. Ten laptops were snatched by thieves from staff at the Department of Trade and Industry and three were mislaid.

Seven were stolen from staff at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and one was "lost in transit". The Treasury had six stolen and one mislaid. Four were stolen from the Lord Chancellor's Department and two from the Welsh Office.

Telegraph, 29.03.2000
Spy lesson No 1: don't lose your laptop
By Michael Smith

DETAILS of MI6 techniques - "tradecraft" - stored in a laptop computer that was left in a taxi were not encrypted and could have been read by anyone.

An advert which was placed in the Evening Standard on March 9 2000 asking for the return of a laptop computer

The computer was left by an MI6 officer - thought to be a female trainee - who had spent the evening drinking with colleagues in a tapas bar about a mile from the MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross in central London.

It was lost on March 3, one day before another laptop containing secret information was stolen from an MI5 officer at Paddington station. MI5 said that although information on its stolen computer concerned Northern Ireland, there was no threat to national security and no lives were at risk. In addition, the computer's classified data was encrypted and could not have been read without a separate electronic keying device.

By contrast, the "training material" on the MI6 computer was not encrypted, and worried intelligence officers were forced to ask police who recovered it 13 days later if anyone had read it. So frantic were they to recover the computer that they placed an advertisement in the classified columns of the London Evening Standard purporting to be from an "academic" and offering a "substantial reward".

The advertisement claimed that the Toshiba 4000 series CDS, a top of the range laptop, contained vital research notes for his PhD. Its loss was important enough for Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary, to be informed, but the Metropolitan Police recovered the laptop two weeks later.

An inquiry is under way into the incident and reports will go to Mr Cook and the intelligence and security committee, the parliamentary watchdog which oversees the activities of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We were assured by the police that the laptop was not compromised. It largely held training information. It was not something hugely damaging."
But there is no doubt that the loss of the computer is very embarrassing to MI6, which makes a great play of the fact that it never reveals details of its operations. It has even refused to release its historical archives from the First World War, arguing that to do so risks putting off potential agents who would not want to know that at some point their names would be revealed.
Marco Rebato, owner of Rebato's, the tapas bar where MI6 staff apparently congregate, said he had no recollection of a drunken spy. He said: "No MI6 agents or anybody else came back to my bar to say they had lost their laptop or left it behind. If someone that drunk had been in, we would have remembered straightaway. It's not like we would know there are secret agents coming here."

But Frank Henry, owner of nearby South Lambeth Cars, said he had been visited by two men who asked if a laptop had been left in one of his cars. He said: "It was all a bit odd. I got a visit from two smartly dressed men who said they had lost a briefcase with something important in it which they thought they might have left in a taxi.

"I remember them saying that they had been to a tapas bar just down the road and that they had been the worse for wear that night. One said they couldn't remember which cab firm they called because they were in such a state and they were trying all of them in the area.
"They seemed a bit cagey, as if they were trying to bluff me or play a game, like they didn't want to tell me everything although I suppose they were quite friendly. We had no record of being called out when they said."

Daily Telegraph, 19.07.2001
FBI 'loses' 449 guns and laptop secrets
By Ben Fenton

THE FBI, already reeling from accusations of scandal and incompetence, was forced to admit yesterday that it cannot find 184 laptop computers and 449 guns.

At least one, and possibly as many as four, of the computers contain top secret information and at least one of the guns lost or stolen from FBI bureaux around America has been used in a murder.

The laptop known to contain secret information holds files connected with that arrest and prosecution of Aldrich Ames, the CIA agent held in 1994 for spying.

The admissions came as the FBI's senior officers were due to appear before a hearing of the watchdog Senate judiciary committee.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the committee, said yesterday: "There are some very, very serious management problems at the FBI."

The Independent, 24.3.2000
MI5 secret laptop stolen at Tube station
By Paul Baldwin, Philip Johnston and John Steele

SECURITY agents were last night hunting for a stolen MI5 laptop computer with coded information about Northern Ireland.

Whitehall sources claimed that the theft posed no threat to national security or to peace moves in the province. The theft took place when an MI5 agent was queueing for a ticket at the crowded Underground station at Paddington in west London. He was distracted by one thief while an accomplice grabbed the £2,000 laptop which the agent had rested on the floor.
The agent gave chase and was joined by two British Transport Police officers, but the thieves escaped. Special Branch officers were examining security video footage of the station, but police are convinced that the theft was an opportunistic crime and not a planned attack. A security source said: "We believe this was a spur of the moment theft and that the MI5 agent was not targeted deliberately.

"The information in the computer does not constitute a threat to national security and is extremely well protected. It is Irish-related information, but not highly sensitive intelligence relevant to either terrorism or the peace process. The incident is highly regrettable and unfortunate. But it is one of those things - no lives have been lost."

Stephen Lander, the director general of MI5, is believed to have passed a full report of the incident to Jack Straw, the Home Secretary. Tony Blair was being kept informed of potential security risks. A Home Office source said that the loss of the computer would be seen as embarrassing.

But he said: "The MI5 employee is the victim of a crime. He did not bungle anything. He did not lose the laptop or leave it on a train. He was robbed." Another security services source said: "Our guys have to get about and that sometimes means using the Underground. I am afraid the image that everyone working for MI5 is a James Bond figure is somewhat wide of the mark.
"I suspect that when these thieves realise what they have stolen, they will be disappointed and will dump it very quickly." Andrew Lansley, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: "This is a very serious potential security lapse. Ministers should account for the operational procedures which have allowed this to occur."