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Obama Passport Breach: Rice Apologizes for “Imprudent Curiosity” of Her Staff
By Privacy Maven | March 21, 2008
The State Dept. called it “imprudent curiosity.” The Obama campaign called it “an outrageous breach of security and privacy.” Caught between adjectival phrases, Secretary of State Rice apologized to Senator Barack Obama.
More coverage at Hot Air. As the Washington Post reports,
Two State Department employees were fired and a third has been disciplined for improperly accessing Sen. Barack Obama’s passport file, the State Department announced last night.
Senior department officials said they learned of the incidents only when a reporter made an inquiry yesterday afternoon. They said an initial investigation indicated that the employees — all of whom worked on contract — were motivated by “imprudent curiosity.”
Bill Burton, spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, called the incidents “an outrageous breach of security and privacy.” He said this is “a serious matter that merits a complete investigation,” adding that the campaign will “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.”
Undersecretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy, in a hastily arranged conference call with reporters, said he asked the State Department inspector general to open an inquiry into the matter and acknowledged that it might need to be expanded.
He also said he would brief Obama, who is locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, today on the matter.
Kennedy said that he did not know yet whether any laws were broken or whether the employees shared the information with others. He said that the incidents, which occurred at three offices, on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, should have been “passed up the line” much sooner and that officials were seeking to determine why they had not been disclosed earlier.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was briefed yesterday afternoon, requested a “full investigation,” department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Topics: Public Figures and Privacy, Data Breaches |