A pile of classified UK documents were found in a “in a soggy heap behind a bus stop in Kent” on 22 June 2021. The person who found the documents notified the BBC. There is no mention of whether the BBC was handed the original documents or copies. The documents were reported lost by the responsible employee at the time of the loss.
What was leaked
Details of British operational planning were leaked. Some marked as “Official sensitive” were deemed printable, but one marked “Secret UK Eyes Only” was not published in the article. The kind of details in the documents were: scenario planning for the passage of HMS Defender’s controversial passage through the Black Sea; arms exports campaigns; concerns about motives of European allies; notes on upcoming meetings with the USA. It also contained secret information about plans for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
This has led to public scolding and humiliation of the UK government by Russia and the opposition.
Could it have been prevented?
If there is a situation where staff are carrying sensitive documents around, it is inevitable that they will be misplaced, lost or stolen. But I think a number of things could have been done to reduce the likelihood of this happening. But we need to bear in mind what we have learnt about the challenge of balancing the keeping of secrets with the practicality of managing them.
- The first thought is that sensitive documents remain on a secure premises – secure, but high effort
- Use digital documents. Less likely to get ‘lost’ but easier for insiders to share or for people to share to the wrong people by accident
- Sensitive documents taken off site could be required to be transported in official vehicles in locked cases until in a secure location. I think this is workable and secure (disregarding physical attack)
Refection
It does raise a question for me. Surely if they were lost, the person could simply retrace their steps to see if the documents were still there. This suggests to me that the documents were dumped at the bus stop possibly by a third party, I don’t believe they were lost where they were found. The person who found the documents has remained anonymous – they may have been the thief. So it’s possible that they were in fact stolen, left at the bus stop and reported to the BBC for the purpose of embarrassing the UK government. Another possibility is that it was a leak posing as an accident. If so I suspect we will never know because whoever did it must be confident in their ability to keep this a secret!
References
BBC and image credit: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57624942
