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Security breach exposes plans of queen’s palace
TheCopenhagenPost
August 21st, 2015
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This article is more than 9 years old.
Architectural drawings and photographs freely available online
Documents include details of private rooms and security systems (photo: Thue)
More than 100 engineering and architectural plans of the queen’s residence, the Christian IX Palace at Amalienborg, and confidential photographs taken inside the building have been freely available on the internet, Ekstra Bladet reports.
Breach of confidentiality
The newspaper has been running a campaign over the summer scrutinising IT security in Denmark and discovered that a subcontractor of the government agency for palaces, Styrelsen for Slotte og Kulturejendomme, had put the documents on a server without password protection, which is in breach of its duty of confidentiality.
The plans and photographs give detailed information about the electricity and security camera systems in the building, as well as showing rooms to which the public don’t have access.
According to Stiig Wæver, a former employee of the security service PET, the information could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
“It’s very problematic when information about a place like Amalienborg isn’t properly secured,” he said.
“For Mr and Mrs Denmark the drawings might not mean much, but they can pose a potential risk if they come into the hands of someone with malicious intent and the necessary expertise, because they can expose soft spots in security.”
Neither the Royal House nor PET have chosen to comment on the case to Ekstra Bladet.
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