It bore all the hallmarks of an elaborate smuggling operation: 25,000 CD-Roms being shipped from an obscure supplier in Holland into the United Kingdom as part of a larger shipment of 220,000 apparently innocuous discs.
The suspect discs contained elaborate code, interspersed with harmless material copied from the other discs. What did the code conceal? Customs suspected illegal porn. The shipment was impounded until inquiries could be made into the importer, a shadowy body called “NASUWT”.
“It seems they thought our CD-Rom containing guidance on the workload agreement was unsavoury,” says Chris Keates, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers. “The problem was with CDs going to Wales. They had the background material in Welsh.”
