Hard to know what to make of this BBC story. First, it's hard to believe Ministry of Defense employees can walk out of the office with classified documents stuffed in their briefcases. Second, it's hard to believe people still read documents in paper format and not online. Third, it's hard to believe that an MoD employee, having walked out of the office with classified documents, would then be stupid enough to leave documents behind on a bus or at a bus stop—while he went off for a pint. But this is what the BBC will have us believe happened.
I wouldn’t at all rule out that this wasn’t a deliberate leak from circles within the British government who oppose this policy and want a public debate on it. Something similar happened in Switzerland some years ago, when intercepts, if I recall correctly about the dictatorship in Egypt, which had been made by the Swiss part of the ECHELON surveillance system were mysteriously found in a train and prompted a national debate on Swiss cooperation with GW Bush’s administration and its war of terror.
I wouldn’t at all rule out that this wasn’t a deliberate leak from circles within the British government who oppose this policy and want a public debate on it. Something similar happened in Switzerland some years ago, when intercepts, if I recall correctly about the dictatorship in Egypt, which had been made by the Swiss part of the ECHELON surveillance system were mysteriously found in a train and prompted a national debate on Swiss cooperation with GW Bush’s administration and its war of terror.