John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama's passport files breached

[*DIVA!]

Two contract workers were fired for illegally accessing Obama's State Department record back on January 08...

Same thing happened to Bill Clinton in 1991...

2 fired over Obama passport file breach

Third employee at State disciplined over accessing candidate’s records


NBC News and news services
updated 13 minutes ago
Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.
Spokesman Sean McCormack Thursday night confirmed instances of what he called "imprudent curiosity" by the State Department employees.
McCormack said the department itself detected the breaches, which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14.


The three people who had access to Obama's passport records were contract employees of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News reported. A senior official told NBC News there was "no political motivation" to the incidents, adding that the three were low-level contract employees doing administrative work and accessed Obama's records out of "curiosity."
This official told NBC News that he does not believe any of the information was sent anywhere.
A spokesman for Obama's presidential campaign called for a complete investigation. The spokesman, Bill Burton, also demanded to know who looked at the file and why, and why the State Department did not reveal details of the security breach until now.
Monitoring systems are tripped when an employee accesses the records of the high-profile individual, a department official told NBC News. "When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified."
Explaining why the contractors had access to the files, the official said: "The State Department uses cleared contractors to design, build and maintain our systems and cleared contract employees provide support to government employees and several steps of passport processing including data entry, file searches, customer service and quality control.
"Each time an employee logs on, he or she acknowledges the records are protected by the privacy act and that they are only available on a need-to-know basis," the official added.
This breaking news story will be updated.

[tkdgirl]

At 1:46 p.m. yesterday the e-mail arrived in reporters' inboxes from Sen. Barack Obama's campaign: "Obama Receives Endorsement of Flag Officers from Army, Navy and Air Force."


It touted a news conference earlier in the day at which 10 high-ranking former military officers had announced their support of Mr. Obama, an attempt to show the senator's strength on national security issues.
Exactly 24 minutes later, Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign returned the salvo with a missive of its own -- a list of 31 high-ranking former military officers who have pledged their support for Mrs. Clinton in the past. Two minutes after that, the campaign issued a memo with pointed questions for Mr. Obama on national security, including:


"As voters evaluate you as a potential Commander-in-Chief, do you think it's legitimate for people to be concerned that you have traveled to only one NATO country, on a brief stopover trip in 2005, and have never traveled to Latin America?"



The Democrats are waging a war of e-mails
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Looks like a Clinton holdover in the State Dept. to me. How ironic the same say his info is breached, the Clinton camp released an email with details about Obama's travel.

[Incognito]

3 candidates' passport files breached

BY DESMOND BUTLER and ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writers


WASHINGTON - The passport files of the three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — have been breached, the State Department said Friday.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the breaches of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the privacy violation regarding Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.

McCormack said the individual who accessed Obama's files also reviewed McCain's file earlier this year. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but not fired. The individual no longer has access to passport records, he said.

"We are reviewing our options with respect to that person and his employment status," McCormack said.

In Clinton's case, an individual last summer accessed her file as part of a training session involving another State Department worker.

McCormack said the one-time violation was immediately recognized and the person was admonished.

The incidents raise the question of whether the information was accessed for political purposes.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Obama and Clinton on Friday and expressed her regrets. She planned to speak with McCain as well. State Department officials headed to Capitol Hill to brief the staffs of all three candidates.

"The secretary has made it clear . . . to them that this is top priority," McCormack said. "There's nothing else that's more important than make sure go through and do this investigation."

The State Department said the Justice Department would be monitoring the probe in case it needs to get involved. The Justice Department declined to comment on its role.

McCormack declined to name the companies that employed the contractors, despite demands by a senior House Democrat that such information is in the public interest.

"At this point, we just started an investigation," he said. "We want to err on the side of caution."

Sen. McCain, who was in Paris on Friday, said any breach of passport privacy deserves an apology and a full investigation.

"The United States of America values everyone's privacy and corrective action should be taken," McCain said.

It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when a person fills out a passport application.

Aside from the file, the information could allow critics to dig deeper into the candidates' private lives. While the file includes date and place of birth, address at time of application and the countries the person has traveled to, the most important detail would be their Social Security number, which can be used to pull credit reports and other personal information.

The violations were detected because electronic files of high-profile people are flagged.

3 candidates' passport files breached - Yahoo! News