Friday, March 21, 2008

'Imprudent curiosity'

Hired hands at Foggy Bottom decided to go snooping around in the data:

Two State Department employees were fired recently and a third disciplined for improperly accessing electronic personal data on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Bush administration officials said today.
The officials, all contract workers, used their authorized computer network access to look up files within the department's consular affairs section, which processes and stores passport information, and read Mr. Obama's passport application and other records, in violation of department privacy rules, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. . . .
Mr. McCormack said the officials did not appear to be seeking information on behalf of any political candidate or party.
"As far as we can tell, in each of the three cases, it was imprudent curiosity," Mr. McCormack told The Washington Times.

Kind of an odd choice for "imprudent curiosity." Why a politician? Why not browse the passport files for Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie?

Don Surber notes the hyped-up reaction from the Obama camp:
"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy. . . . This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."
Like Don says, they investigated, found the culprits and fired them. What more does the Obama camp want, other than an opportunity to grandstand?

No comments:

Post a Comment