14 DAY TRIAL // The conference call between the FBI and the UK Metropolitan Police, leaked by Anonymous a few days ago, didn’t cause concern only among law enforcement agencies. Now, a Sheffield Member of Parliament (MP), David Blunkett, demands an apology after the British agents mocked Sheffield in the call with their US counterparts.
“You didn’t miss anything. It’s a khazi. It’s not exactly a jewel in England’s crown,” said one of the members of the Metropolitan Police referring to Sheffield.
According to the Sheffield Telegraph, this was the part that Blunkett, former Home Secretary, was very displeased about, demanding an apology on behalf of the city whose citizens may have been hurt after the remark was heard worldwide.
“Those making such remarks against Sheffield have no idea that the city is in fact a ‘jewel’, with the largest number of trees of any city in Europe, more greenery than any other urban area and surrounded by the most wonderful countryside including the Peak National Park which is the second most visited protected National Park area in the world,” he said.
Furthermore, Blunkett, who chairs the non-profit Internationals Cyber Security Protection Alliance demands explanations for the lack of security measures that allowed for the call to be obtained by Anonymous hackers in the first place.
If at first everyone was concerned mainly with the fact that the call provided hackers with some precious information regarding the status of the investigations that targeted them, as the audio file gets analyzed, more details surface.
While the Sheffield-themed jokes may have seemed harmless at the time to agents that said there’s nothing more to the city than a shopping center, after the conversation was made public a lot of people may have taken it as a serious offence towards the city’s officials. Not to mention the fact that Metropolitan Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe is from Sheffield.