McCain Team Sells Second Hand, Unwiped Blackberrys

Written by
Desire Athow

15 December, 2008

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In one of the striking instance of negligence, members of John McCain’s now-inoperative presidential campaign have been found selling off technical assets, including laptops and mobile handsets, used during the campaign without wiping out the content stored on the devices.

A Fox 5 News reporter had managed to purchase two Blackberry handsets in a “gone out of business sale” for as low as $20 per piece, with the devices reportedly contained some crucial contact details of key donors, lobbyists, and major advisors related with the campaign.

One of the handsets purchased by the reporter has had around 50 mobile phone numbers of people linked with the campaign, including mobile number of an ex Virginia governor, with a large number of emails spanned from the month of September until a couple of days after the presidential election.

Commenting upon the embarrassing leaks of important contact details, one of the staffer said, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise”.

However, defending the carelessness of its campaign’s members, McCain’s team said in a statement, “It was an unfortunate staff error and procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure”.

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Our Comments

Selling Blackberries without first wiping them out clean is non-sense. We understand that every cent counts, it would certainly make more sense to recycle/destroy them instead (and avoid the public humiliation). At the time of writing, there were more than 2000 Blackberry smartphones on sale on Ebay UK and chances are that quite a few still contain data (or easily recoverable data).

McCain Team Sells Second Hand, Unwiped Blackberrys

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