The British government launched an urgent investigation after a soccer fan found documents containing confidential military information strewn along a street, according to the BBC. Mike Gibbard stumbled upon the files spilling out of a trash bag in Newcastle, northeast England, while on his way to watch a game on March 16—the day after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared plans of military strikes in a Signal group chat to which a journalist had been accidentally added. The papers Gibbard found included a plethora of information including soldiers’ ranks and email addresses, shift patterns, and even information about weapons storage, according to the BBC. The broadcaster said the files appear to be connected to Catterick Garrison in northern England, the British Army’s largest base. One of the files reportedly had a heading related to accessing a weapons storage area and an intruder detection system. Another was marked with the footnote “official – sensitive,” which means it could lead to a “threat to life” in some cases if compromised, according to U.K. government guidance cited by the BBC. An information security consultant told the network that the files could pose a “significant” threat to the people named in them. Gibbard reported his find to local police who in turn handed the files to the British Ministry of Defence. “We are looking into this urgently,” a spokesperson for that agency said.
