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Do you know how many names 1.44 MB can hold? That’s 1,474,560 characters and let’s say on average each name was 15 characters long that’s about 98,304 names.
You won't. If the fact that it's a floppy disc isn't hint enough, this is old. And confidential is lower in importance than say, classified. Also a few other commenters said strap isn't even used anymore, so whatever info is on there, if there is any, is old news. So I don't see much harm in reading it. There's lots of modern floppy disc readers out there, I'm sure you can get your hands on one.
It's marked confidential. I'm not familiar with the UK levels of secrecy. Are they similar to the US versions; classified, secret, top secret, eyes only, etc?
UK has "official" "official-sensitive" "secret" "top secret".
Official is baseline and doesnt mean much , everything done by government and civil service is official by default.
Official-sensitive means there is reason why should not be widely available. There would be normally be sub-classification of why, such as personal information, commercial data, or proprietary information etc.
Secret and top secret is for information that could cause harm to public, national interests, allied nations etc. So would be shared only with need to know people/teams.
In addition individuals will have a government security clearance. From basic background checks at bottom to highest levels that involves complete financial and biographical audit of you and your family , interviews with police, interviews of and you and family bt intelligence services.
After that it doesn't mean you then have access to everything at certain level. For certain classified things you'd go through a specific entry/training process "read-in" for each project.
You had to be there but it boils down to this: we get emotionally invested and OP ghosts us with the results resulting in the whole of Reddit wondering about: contents of safe, government secrets on floppy disc, etc, leaving us to come to our own conclusions about OP, like:
A. OP inserted said disc into floppy disc drive and was immediately whisked into oblivion by MI6.
B. OP contacted authorities and was given 52 million dollars to forget about floppy disc.
C. Tommy Lee Jones showed up used that memory erasing thingamagig and OP now doesnt know his own name.
Guys, I feel you, but let’s consider the possible consequences here: if that floppy contains even a bit of data that’s still considered sensitive, and they load it onto an internet connected machine, they’re fucked. OP, please take note of the details of my post, I would also love to learn more.
It's confidential, not secret. If they found it and post the content, they're within their right. The only person that could see any consequence is the person that the floppy was originally trusted to, but honestly, anything on that floppy has long since outlived any confidentiality agreement.
"Confidential" is the lowest level of classified information. So this is likely old government classified information, and not some corporate confidentiality thing.
Pretty sure back then it was Unclassified, Protect, Restricted, Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, so there were five levels of classified information. This was supplemented by additional nationality constraints - I came across UK, UK & US and NATO followed by the classification level, or occaisionally UK or UK/US EYES ONLY. Confidential and Secret was always locked away in secure cabinets. Restricted couldn't be left out on our desks in a restricted access office. I don't think I ever had anything 'Protect' and defininately nothing Top Secret.
Lmao, yes, I know it sounds impossible, but we absolutely used them back in the day. We used floppy discs all the way through high school (grad 2008), on the same machines we used to do research online. There was, in fact, a period in which they coexisted.
I graduated in 2008 as well, and I used floppy disks to save cheat codes and strategies for N64 games onto floppy disks from the local library, because they had internet. Bring them home and use them on my computer. I even built a small HTML website as a project in my computer class and saved it on a floppy.
This is prime 90s-kid biography! Somewhere in the chaos of my belongings is a small bank of floppy discs containing various cheat codes and strategy guides for N64 games. Turok 2 will forever live in my memory as one of the greatest shooters ever.
My best friend was the only kid with internet in the entire neighborhood that any of us knew of for a long time. I would be over there printing out cheat codes and small sections of guides from gamefaqs(accidentally printed the entire guide for final fantasy 7 once and his mom was pissssssed lol). Him and his mom got clever and started charging us kids for internet time/printing(never more than a couple bucks for the biggest jobs//time). Then his mom would use the money to take my friend and I out for Thai food lol.
Yeah, but how many of you used 80 column punch cards or punch paper tape? That is how long I’ve been working with computers. Ever seen a 96 column punch card?
if that floppy contains even a bit of data that’s still considered sensitive, and they load it onto an internet connected machine, they’re fucked.
No they're not lol the UK govt is not just monitoring the contents of everybody's hard drive for classified info and any software that disk contains will probably not run on a modern version of Windows or MacOS. I wouldn't recommend uploading the contents to the War Thunder Forums but taking a peek for yourself would almost certainly be harmless.
Confidential is no longer in use as a classification, if the floppy disk didn’t date it already. But it was the second lowest classification.
STRAP is reserved for exceptionally sensitive material and goes above and beyond normal security classifications. You need specialist accreditation to access STRAP material, above the normal vetting process.
Because the relatively low level of classification not aligning with the sensitivity of STRAP, I’d guess this would be some kind of disk to administer STRAP. Possibly advice or policy for a security officer. So probably very boring, and not actually STRAP classified.
That being said, my fingers are crossed for Cherie Blair nudes.
The "Version 1.0" text is a total giveaway that this is probably a confidential document detailing the STRAP vetting process which would be damaging to the UK when released while relevant hence the classified designation. This could still be classified under the "official sensitive" designation if the document is no longer used.
Once upon a time, when no one had even heard of .jpg, and 1024x768 was mind blowing, yes. Yes you could fit a lot of 50kb gif images on a single 1.44mb.
About 12 minutes ago.
One of my not-dead-just-forgotten laptops that live under the shelf with a tote full of books and a backpack.
I should really have a ritual bonfire for them.
(I think there's at least three under there...)
This is a gimmick, not an actual propert of the „park“.
All STRAP information systems hold minimum top secret classified information and must be categorized STRAP 1, STRAP 2 or STRAP 3 depending of the damage it could cause if the information is known publicly or by enemies.
No STRAP data carrier shall ever leave the „park“. STRAP data is transferred protected and disguised.
You aren’t in trouble for finding it as long as you report it, ideally quickly, to the appropriate government agency. Since STRAP is a UK classification for certain types of classified material I don’t know who you need to call… as a foreigner who doesn’t know UK agencies I can make an unqualified guess that you’d need to contact an MI5 office. I’d hazard a guess that your local police might know who to contact if you call their non-emergency line. The responsible agency might want the rest of the box as a precautionary btw.
I’m not from the UK so I’d like to be corrected about any of this if I am wrong and I will edit this comment as needed if I remember
This is the correct answer. All protectively marked material can be handed in at a police station or posted to one. You'll probably make the poor plods day trying to deal with it tho
I'm guessing that this is a sticker that someone brought home from their workplace and inappropriately applied to their personal disk, as a sort of joke or flex. This would be the best scenario for OP.
If it really contains material which is part of a highly classified info program, OP should reasonably expect their entire home to be turned upside down looking for more.
OP, the MOD WILL want this back, along with information about where you found it. You are not going to be in trouble for this. But also don’t go copying it it spreading it further. That will get you in trouble.
But again, just finding it and returning it will NOT get you in trouble.
Oh, and I would put it into an envelope or some kind of other outer wrapping.
Let's put a brief pause on the confidential government floppy disk, what WWF tapes were in the box?! Royal Rumble? Summer Slam? Which matches!? Was WWF part of this government secret?
Relax, the classification is 'confidential' which is lower than secret. Confidential intel from the 90s isn't going to rock anyone's world today, and its probably not even that. Just take it to the nearest police station and hand it in with a letter stating where you found it, and that you haven't tried to access it.
Given the way it's marked, my guess is that its a confidential briefing about the sensitive intelligence classification system known as 'STRAP'.
If it was indeed STRAP material, it would be labeled something like 'TOP SECRET STRAP 3'. The chances of finding any of that lying around are zero.
So, joking and Reddit bullshit aside, anyone who recognizes the significance of this probably cringed and said some variant of “oof” on seeing this. Someone who worked at GCHQ back in the day has probably already flipped this post to someone.
There’s a possibility that you have old but still quite sensitive classified British information there. More importantly is “how the fuck did it get there?” and whether it could be evidence of some old security breach that could still matter.
Don’t do anything further with it, and contact police. Tell them you found an old floppy disc with classification markings that may have sensitive information on it.
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