The Justice Department may let the FBI "conduct a search-and-destroy mission on any computers harboring classified information about a 1980s case that temporarily became public in a lawsuit," the Associated Press reports. "A federal judge previously rejected the idea."

The initial request from federal prosecutors in Sacramento, Calif., was considered highly unusual by legal experts because it did not specify which computers the government believed might contain the classified information or how agents would retrieve and destroy information already made public...

At issue are two court filings in a suit by a former FBI counterintelligence agent. The documents include brief references to a one-month undercover trip overseas in late 1987 by the agent, Lok T. Lau, who was fired for shoplifting more than a decade later and is suing over his dismissal.

The documents - still containing the classified material - were available from the courthouse for up to 19 days. Copies have been published on the Internet, including the Web site for the Sacramento-based California First Amendment Coalition, an open-government group.

(Thanks to Defense Tech reader JI)