A senior intelligence official in the Cabinet office in the UK is responsible for a serious breach of security after leaving Top Secret documents with the latest al-Qaeda intelligence on a London commuter train. The Cabinet Official has been suspended from his job.

A fellow passenger on the June 10 train found the documents and handed them to the BBC, who then passed them to the police. The envelope contained several pages, stamped “UK Top Secret”, with the latest government intelligence on al-Qaeda and Iraq’s security forces. The documents were also stamped “for UK/US/Canadian and Australian eyes only” and were dated June 5th. The documents were entitled “Al-Qaeda: Constraints and Vulnerabilities” and “Iraqi Security Forces: More or Less Challenged?”

An official investigation is being requested of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. In light of the events, people are asking:

• Why were top secret documents allowed outside the office?
• Why were top secret documents printed (ie not encrypted in a data file)?
• Why were top secret documents read in a public place?

Given the string of serious security breaches by the UK government over the past several months, this only increases the public pressure to understand why security policies are being overlooked repeatedly. The employee in question here had the security authority to remove sensitive documents from the secure office environment if strict protocols were followed - perhaps it is time to ban such document removal altogether.

Via BBC, CNN, Reuters, Times Online Tags: al qaeda, iraq, top secret, uk top secret, data breach, breach, security breach, government security, secret information, intelligence