[austechwriter] UK government gets bitten by Microsoft Word
- From: "Elizabeth Fullerton" <Elizabeth.Fullerton@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 08:43:40 +1000
Article in yesterday's Age about the UK govt discovering that it's not a
good idea to put a Word document up onto a website...
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/02/1056825430340.html
.... and I'll bet the "small program" he used was a couple of lines of
VBA...
Actually, I'll include the text below for those who don't have access:
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
UK government gets bitten by Microsoft Word
By Sam Varghese
July 2 2003
The British government is unlikely to use Microsoft Word for creating
official documents which are to be released publicly, after the authors
of the controversial dossier put out by Britain in February this year
were identified by examining the information contained in a Word version
of the file.=20
IT researcher Richard M. Smith downloaded the dossier - which was put on
the web in both Word and PDF format - and decided to try and find out
the authors.=20
Smith wrote a small program to retrieve the revision logs and found four
names and information regarding who had revised the file and in which
order it was revised. He was also able to spot the point at which the
file was copied to a floppy.=20
During the inquiry in the last week of June into efforts to drum up
support for the war, Alastair Campbell of the UK Communications
Information Centre had to explain the dossier plagiarism and details of
the revision log.=20
The dossier, which was also cited by US Secretary of State Colin Powell
in an address to the United Nations, earned the government and Prime
Minister Tony Blair plenty of flak after Cambridge University politics
lecturer Dr Glen Rangwala noticed that a portion had been plagiarised
from a 10-year-old US research paper.=20
Smith's analysis showed a reference to cic22 which he deduced as being
the Communications Information Centre.=20
From there on, it was easy to identify the authors and their positions
in government ranks by reverting to Dr Rangwala and British journalists.
The Word version of the document has now been removed from the British
government site.=20
This is not the first time that public use of Word documents has led to
red faces. Criminals have been caught because they used Office.
Companies in negotiations have been stunned to find their opponents
seemed to have insider knowledge and public officials have been
embarrassed when early "unrefined" versions of their statements have
been published in detail.
********** CAUTION - Disclaimer **********
This message may contain privileged and confidential
information. If you are not the intended recipient of this
message (or responsible for delivery of the message to
such person) you are hereby notified that any use,
dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this message
is prohibited. If you have received this message in error,
you should destroy it and kindly notify the sender by reply
e-mail. Please advise immediately if you or your employer
do not consent to Internet e-mail for messages of this kind.
Opinions, conclusions and other information in this
message that do not relate to the official business of
Expert Information Services Pty Ltd ("The Company")
shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.
The Company advises that this e-mail and any attached
files should be scanned to detect viruses. The Company
accepts no liability for loss or damage (whether caused
by negligence or not) resulting from the use of any
attached files.
**EIS******** End of Disclaimer **********
**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.
To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.
To search the austechwriter archives, go to
www.freelist.org/archives/austechwriter
To contact the list administrator, send a message to
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************
Other related posts:
