No anti-terror info on lost police USB stick

Greater Manchester Police has confirmed that a memory stick handed into the Daily Star does not contain highly confidential security information as initially reported.

The newspaper got its hands on the memory stick earlier this week, apparently picked up by a member of the public outside a police station. The paper said that the individual checked the memory stick's content on his laptop before handing it over.

Earlier this week, Greater Manchester Police refused to confirm ownership of the stick, telling V3.co.uk that it was waiting to have the device delivered to carry out its own investigations.

Although the police force has now admitted ownership of the USB stick, it has denied the Daily Star's claims about sensitive information.

"Greater Manchester Police has recovered a memory stick found by a member of the public. The device has been reviewed and the documents contained on it are used to deliver officer safety training," the force said in a statement.

"All are public documents, except one which is due to be released into the public domain later this year."

This is contrary to the Daily Star report, which claimed that the documents were "highly sensitive".

"[The memory stick] was discovered by a 34 year-old businessman who was astounded by the contents when he fitted it into his laptop to check what was on it," the paper reported.

The man who found the device is reported to have said: "It is scandalous that someone in the police, presumably a high-ranking officer, has been clumsy and negligent enough to lose information as powerful as this.

"If a terrorist group got hold of this, they could see which officers specialised in what field and where they should target."

However, this mercenary behaviour appears to have rankled the police almost as much as the accusations.

"I think it is fair to suggest that, in most cases, anyone who found an item belonging to Greater Manchester Police outside a police station might do the right thing and hand it in. The person in this instance clearly had other motivations," said superintendent Mike Freeman, from the Greater Manchester Police Professional Standards Branch.

In response to a request for guidance on what members of the public should do if they suspect they have found confidential or personal data and documents, the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) suggested that in this instance the finder had acted inappropriately.

"Our common sense advice is that if a member of the public finds a memory stick, the best thing they could do is give it back to the owner or hand it in at a local police station," the ICO told V3.co.uk.

The irony of this aside, the Manchester force does appear to have learned a lesson from the incident.

"We will be reminding staff of the importance of looking after police property and declaring losses to us when they occur," Freeman said.