From: InfoSec News (alertsinfosecnews.org)
Date: Mon Jul 06 2009 - 04:23:06 CDT

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197562/MI6-chief-blows-cover-wifes-Facebook-account-reveals-family-holidays-showbiz-friends-links-David-Irving.html

By Jason Lewis
The Daily Mail
05th July 2009

The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security
breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details
on the Facebook website.

Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence
Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying
operations abroad.

But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed
potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who
their friends are and where they spend their holidays.

Amazingly, she had put virtually no privacy protection on her account,
making it visible to any of the site's 200million users who chose to be
in the open-access 'London' network - regardless of where in the world
they actually were.

There are fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder may have
compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends.

Lady Shelley Sawers' extraordinary lapse exposed the couple's
friendships with senior diplomats and well-known actors, including Moir
Leslie, who plays a leading character in The Archers. And it revealed
that the intelligence chief's brother-in-law - who holidayed with him
last month - is an associate of the controversial Right-wing historian
David Irving.

Immediately after The Mail on Sunday alerted the Foreign Office to the
astonishing misjudgment, all trace of the material – which could
potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists - was
removed from the internet.

The move suggests that MI6 or the Foreign Office, which is also
responsible for the GCHQ electronic eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham,
had not vetted what sort of information Sir John and his family were
distributing over the internet.

[...]

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