Being a member of the British Royal Family means having to pose up a storm for PR purposes in order to show the people that all is well and you’re actually being useful. It’s been done for decades so it’s not really that surprising. Unless you’re Prince William that one time where you accidentally leaked a heap of important passwords that could’ve jeopardised national security.
Speaking of the Royals, the GOAT team talk about ‘Megxit’ on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
With all the attention on Prince Harry breaking off from the royal fam and pissing off grandma, it’s easy to forget how Prince William was at the centre of a far more serious little faux pas that had actual consequences.
Back in 2012 (as per The Guardian), the royal fam really wanted to highlight Prince William’s role as a search and rescue pilot, as well as get some buzz going for his then-new official website. To do this, the plan was to take a bunch of photos of him hard at work with the Royal Air Force.
Pretty standard stuff and it all went quite well as the photos were distributed to every major news website.
That is until the Ministry of Defence realised that these PR photos of Prince William hard at work with the RAF contained sensitive information like passwords and usernames in the background.
What initially began as an innocent little PR exercise meant as a Prince William fluff piece ended up being something of a national security embarrassment due to this unintended info leak.
The photos were later taken down and replaced with properly redacted pics, but not before the world caught a glimpse of some sensitive RAF information on major news websites everywhere. The Ministry Of Defence were forced to change their passwords before issuing out a sheepish statement about the little faux pas.
“A number of photographs of Flight Lieutenant Wales were taken while on duty working as a helicopter search and rescue pilot at RAF Valley on Anglesey, Wales. The passwords and user names shown have now been reset as a precaution and we are satisfied the images do not contravene security regulations.
“All the photos have been now amended and reissued. Media organisations are kindly asked to use these images”.
Not sure what’s worse though, Prince William jeopardising national security just for some PR or the fact that the RAF reportedly used stupidly easy-to-guess passwords for important logins.
Maybe that’s a tactic Prince Harry can use to divert some attention away from himself and Meghan Markle: just leak some important passwords and watch the drama unfold. Actually, better not because pissing off grandma even more isn’t a wise move.
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