The state Department is admitting to Improperly Accessing Candidates Passport Data. Two employees fired due to, “Snooping” Obamas Records
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The passport files of presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, and Sen. John McCain, a Republican, were improperly accessed by State Department workers, a U.S. official said on Friday.
The official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, declined further comment. On Thursday, the State Department said it had fired two employees and disciplined a third for having snooped in the passport files of Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat running for president.
Source: reuters.com via politisite
Rice apologizes to Obama will do the same for the others
WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized Friday to Senator Barack Obama for an incident in which three State Department contract workers unnecessarily reviewed the Democratic presidential candidate’s passport file.
“I told him that I was sorry, and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed,” Rice said. “None of us wants to have a circumstance where any American’s passport files are looked at in an unauthorized way,” she added.
The episode raised questions as to whether the scrutiny was politically motivated. Two of the workers were fired and a third was reprimanded for improperly opening electronic information from the passport file of Obama, State Department officials said.
Source: iht.com via politisite
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This is a pretty serious problem on two separate levels. If the records were accessed by lowly peons with nothing better to do than poke around things they shouldn’t, then there is a fundamental flaw in how personal information is recorded, archived, and supervised in our government, and people should be pissed. But what if these long-past breaches were brought to light now to demonstrate the vulnerability of every american, no matter who, to an annonymous, powerful hand that works entirely under the table? Call me crazy, but either way, this country is in serious trouble.