I'll update this as more comes in. But KO is reporting that Obama's passport file at the State Department has been 'violated.'
Not sure what that means.
UPDATE: 2 fired over Obama passport breach
Third employee at State disciplined over accessing candidate’s records
BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
updated 5:54 p.m. PT, Thurs., March. 20, 2008
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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23736254/
Abrams has reported that according to State Dept. Spokesman Sean McCormack has said 'this was imprudent curiosity. We are taking immediate steps to ensure that this is nothing more then that.' Says Condi Rice only found out about this yesterday.
Is the State Department looking for dirt to use against Obama in the Fall? It is hard to imagine that there wasn't some sort of nefariousness involved in this.
Olberman reports that two contract employees have been terminated from their job and a third official disciplined, in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. A monitoring system was tripped when they accessed his file. This breach occurred in Janruary, right around the time when Obama was on the rise during the campaign cycle. It isn't beyond belief that there was some dirt digging going on in an attempt to hurt Obama's candidacy.
Echoes of the Senior Bush administration looking at Clinton's file?!?!
Schuster reports that Patrick F. Kennedy, Undersecretary of Affairs at State, is the person in the line of fire. They didn't inform Obama of this until today, apparently; Needless to say, Obama's campaign is rather pissed about this.
Makes one wonder... just where did that photo of Obama in native African garb come from again?
Update: Per KO, Jan 9th, Feb. 1st, March 14th. Nobody told Obama. Three separate events. The first two people who did so were fired, the third was reprimanded. State is reporting this as 'curiosity only' and says there was nothing bad done with the info. Howard Feinman wants to know: what did they read? Who did they talk to about it? The file goes back right to his time as a teenager, so there's a lot of information involved.
Updated by KO:
Senior law enforcement reports that there's no criminal investigation.|
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