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University study finds U.S. defense contract information in 'electronic waste' in Africa

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Friday, June 26, 2009

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According to a documentary about journalism students at the University of British Columbia tracking electronic waste (e-waste), details of United States defense contracts and confidential military data were left on a donated hard drive which was purchased for US$35 in Ghana.

The purchased hard drive was a donation by Northrop Grumman Corporation, an American aerospace and defense technology company.

The PBS investigative documentary, Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground, tracked what happened to donated or discarded electronics. The journalism students randomly purchased seven hard drives in Tema, Africa. "We plugged them and in and started reading files … They were just sitting there," said Klein.

As part of the international reporting course the students then submitted the hard drives to Enoch Kwesi Messiah, a computer scientist at Regent University to see if any of the previous owners had erased the data on their hard drives before disposal.

Messiah stated, “I can get your bank numbers and I retrieve all your money from your accounts. If ever somebody gets your hard drive, he can get every information about you from the drive, no matter where it is hidden.”

The graduate journalism students under Professor Peter Klein travelled to the Korle Lagoon in Accra the capital of Ghana. Beside the polluted waters is Agbogbloshie, the largest collection of e-waste, useless electronic donations.

“Life is really difficult; they eat here, surrounded by e-waste,” said Mike Anane, a local journalist, “They basically are here to earn a living. But you can imagine the health implications.” The e-waste is burned and rendered down for copper, iron, or gold from the components.

"It's essentially this charred toxic wasteland," said Blake Sifton, one of the students. "It's incredibly difficult to breathe because there's usually between five and six and seven fires going at any time .… and there's tons and tons of this black, sticky, acrid smoke coming out of them."


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  This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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