Clinton, Obama, McCain Passport Files Snooped by State Department Employees

by politisite | March 21, 2008 at 12:16 pm | 534 views | 6 comments

Clinton, Obama, McCain Passport Files Snooped by the State Department Employees

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.

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.

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jordan

at 13:18 on March 21st, 2008

good stuff:

Let's face it: the current administration has made a habit of spying on Americans- it's not really too surprising that White House hopefuls would come under such scrutiny. I want to believe Rice's explanation, but I can't.

Karen Hatter

at 14:39 on March 21st, 2008

Jordan, belief in an explanation offered by almost everyone who has served or is serving during this current administration requires an enormous leap of faith.

Rachel Nixon

at 15:07 on March 21st, 2008

good stuff:

This is good stuff, thanks.

politisite

at 17:40 on March 21st, 2008

Anonymous <noreply-comment@blogger.com> wrote:

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Clinton, Obama, McCain Passport Files Snooped by t...":

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.

politisite

at 17:42 on March 21st, 2008

You might want to go back to the clinton years when 200 FBI files sat around the write house. My understanding is this is low level GS-Grades that thought it would be interesting to pull up these files, two have been fired. I worked for the Dept of Veterans Affairs, we had a and addiional secuity measure that brought up a screen with a statement about further accessing the flagged file. These were sent to IT than is there was no need to know to the director. By us hearing about it in the news, the system did work as we would never hear about it without the checks insalled in the process