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Merde! French Prez palace blueprints nicked from cable layer

USB stick held sensitive govt building plans

An unlucky cable worker lost the ground plans for France's most important government buildings when his USB stick was nicked.

According to a report in Le Parisien, translated by Le Reg foreign desk, thieves grabbed the unnamed man's flash drive and other possessions from a car after he parked up to meet someone in the Gare de Lyon railway station.

The stolen memory stick contained a collection of personal files and detailed ground plans for the most important government buildings in the country: the President's house at the Elysee Palace - the equivalent of Blighty's Number 10 Downing Street - plus the headquarters of the Parisian police and the Beauveau Square seat of France's Interior Minister.

And no, the documents weren't encrypted.

Those plans are now in the hands of thieves, but it is not known whether it was a targeted swipe or an opportunistic crime. Still, if the crooks choose to look through the USB drive it won't be too hard for them to find the unencrypted, easily readable plans.

The victim was employed by a company that had just scooped a contract to replace all the fibre-optic networking in these buildings as well as several other government properties. A police investigation into the theft, which happened on Sunday, 19 August, is underway according to the paper.

Le Reg contacted the French Interior Ministry for more information and will update when it replies. ®

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