Passport files of candidates breached

[Contrary1]

"WASHINGTON - State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — and the department's inspector general is investigating.

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

The incidents raise questions as to whether the information was accessed for political purposes and why two contractors involved in the Obama search were dismissed before investigators had a chance to interview them. It recalled an incident in 1992, when a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted over a search of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's passport records. At the time, Clinton was challenging President George H.W. Bush..."

<snip>

Ok, are you ready for the punchline?

"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," he said..."

Sometimes you just have to shake your head at their hypocrisy.

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23736254/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. I need a shower, I agree with grandpa

he said something we can both agree on... I will add, heads have to roll and not just the low level DynCorp mercs involved in this

[dkf]

2. There were three types of breaches

Posted: Friday, March 21, 2008 12:28 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under: 2008, Clinton, McCain, Obama
From MSNBC's David Shuster
Here's what we know so far:
(1) Fall 2007. A training exercise last fall involved somebody typing in Hillary Clinton's name... The person involved was not fired.

(2-a) January 9, 2008. A contractor looked at the passport file of Barack Obama. The supervisor felt it was a firing offense. The contractor was fired. But the immediate supervisor didn't notify officials outside office of consular affairs.

(2-b) February 21, 2008. Another contractor looked at Obama's passport file. Supervisor felt it was a firing offense. The contractor was fired. The immediate supervisor didn't notify officials outside office of consular affairs.

(3) March 14, 2008. A third contractor accessed Obama's passport file and McCain's passport file. Supervisor felt it was not a firing offense. The contractor suspended. The immediate supervisor didn't notify officials outside office of consular affairs.

Key questions: What made the Jan. 9 and Feb. 21 breaches of Obama more serious than the fall '07 breach of Clinton and the March 14 breaches of Obama/McCain?

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/21/793599.aspx

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. In my view all of them are serious

and deserve fully heads to roll and not only low level flunkie mercs either

[dkf]

4. Sounds like the Hillary incident didn't result in any records being seen.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. well it was a student you know, they do this in training

not the only place where that is done... but the fact that a student did this in-spite of warnings, is serious

[dkf]

6. How do we know they were warned? Is there more info?

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Have you ever worked for even an insurance company?

You are seeing files all day.. during traiing they have fake files for you to practice on, or go snoop on a relative worst case

This is SOP... even for police academies and State, And yes, NPR mentioned that yesterday and it made all the sense in the world

You are told in no uncertain terms, keep your nose away from real files or files of VIPs worst case

[dkf]

8. Well SOP doesn't necessarily get followed.

Mostly when I've trained people, I just tell them how to do the job, and nobody ever gave me guidelines on how to train anyone.

And back in the day when we were hiring a lot, there wasn't so much concern on confidentiality.

Back in college I did summer stints at a bank and I don't remember getting that lecture there either. Of course that was 20 years ago.

Of course now I'm not even allowed to throw away paper. Just hamburger wrappers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. There you go, SOP has changed

blame the Privacy Act... which came to be after you started working

So if it wasn't followed then the instructor's ass should be in the sling

If they gave the warning....

You know how it goes

By the way my hubby trained recently as a cop and he was given the warning and they trained on DUMMY files

It gets worst, they were also told that if they stopped lets say insert VIP here, unless they were going to actually give a ticket, NOT to run the check.

Hell, he did give a ticket to a member of the city council and that triggered the alarms... if he gave a ticket to insert Senator or Congressman here, you think the system would not have triggered? Working at State has the same caveats

[MaryCeleste]

9. Or that the student did not realize they were on the "live" system

A large data system I use at least once a week has a production and practice versions online from the same interface. They share some names (at least at first). Some of those shared people found their data in that system seriously hosed because students logged into the production system by mistake.

[liberal1973]

11. That last one March 14

Interesting it seems to me that the one with mcBush in it is just a cover. Just to say well mcBush was breached too. The real breach was still Barack. The pattern is clear as to who they were looking at.