This is insane:
Confidential passport files of all three presidential candidates were improperly breached by State Department employees, a department spokesman said.The private data of Democratic Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican Senator John McCain were accessed in separate incidents, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said today.
``We're going to do a full investigation,'' McCormack said. ``We take very seriously the trust that is put in us'' to safeguard personal data, he said.
State Department officials are visiting the Capitol Hill offices of all three senators today in Washington to explain the incidents. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke by phone with Obama and Clinton to apologize and she plans to call McCain today, McCormack said.
The department's acting inspector general will supervise the internal investigation. They are ``also going to take a look at whether there are any systemic issues that need to be addressed,'' McCormack said. The results of the investigation will be given to the committees in Congress that oversee the department, he said.
The State Department last night announced that two contract workers were fired and a third was disciplined for accessing Obama's passport data.
McCormack cited an incident last summer when a trainee had unauthorized access to Hillary Clinton's passport file. It was part of a training seminar in which people usually ``are encouraged to enter a family member's name,'' McCormack said today in Washington. The individual was ``immediately admonished,'' he said.
The State Department also detected earlier this year that one of the people who accessed Obama's file also accessed McCain's, McCormack said. That individual was disciplined.
The State Department's inquiry began yesterday after a reporter inquired about the breach of Obama's records. After senior management researched the incidents surrounding Obama, they decided to check whether Clinton's and McCain's records also were breached. This morning, it became clear that they had, McCormack said.
This really should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be said. Passport files contain all of the information necessary to steal someone's identity. All of them should be very carefully protected, but the info for sitting members of Congress should be guarded particularly carefully. And major presidential candidates under the protection of the Secret Service? Those should be lock down so tight that only people with clearance should be granted access.
This is data management 101. And yet the State Dept. wonders if they may have "any systemic issues that need to be addressed?" Are you kidding me?
UPDATE: I should've known Glenn would run with this:
This disturbing episode provides yet more vivid proof of how dangerous and misguided it is to continue to vest the Federal Government with the power to spy and collect data on the activities of its citizens, and, particularly, to do so without any oversight or real safeguards.
The domestic spying arm of the U.S. Government has grown steadily over the last several decades but has exploded since 9/11. Virtually all imaginable categories of invasive information about the private lives of innocent Americans -- from telephone calls and email correspondence to health and prescription records and even the most innocuous incidents -- are now collected and stored in digital dossiers by the U.S. Government and are accessible to untold numbers of public and private employees. This explosion in domestic surveillance has been accompanied by the patently foolish assumption that government officials are so well-intentioned, honorable and interested in using this data only for our own Good that we can trust them to compile and use it without external checks -- such as judicial warrants -- because the danger of abuse is so low....This happens all the time. It's an inevitable outcome of allowing government spying with no oversight. Just two weeks ago, the DOJ acknowledged again that its own FBI, for years, has been severely abusing the Patriot Act's "national security letters," which allow the FBI to obtain personal information on Americans with no warrants and no oversight. Extremely invasive information has been obtained far beyond what the law allows, regarding tens of thousands of American citizens accused of no wrongdoing whatsoever, and without there even being a pending criminal investigation.
And yet what is Congress doing about all of this? Until the House refused last week to pass the new Draconian FISA bill demanded by the White House, what they've been doing is vesting greater and ever more invasive spying powers in the Bush administration and subsequent administrations with no oversight whatsoever and no warrant requirements.
The "Protect America Act" passed and signed into law last August, as well as the Rockefeller/Cheney bill passed by the Senate in January, authorize inconceivably broad domestic spying powers -- to listen in on all of our international calls and read all of our international emails -- with no requirement to obtain a warrant and no oversight of any kind...
Why would anyone trust the current administration and subsequent administrations -- not just their political officials but the thousands and thousands of permanent government and private employees -- to spy on Americans, and store and collect extremely invasive information about Americans' private lives, with no oversight or requirement to demonstrate probable cause to a court -- as the Founders required -- to believe that the citizen being spied on has actually done something wrong? Whatever the outcome of the Obama passport investigation is, whoever the parties responsible are and whatever their motives, shouldn't this rather conclusively demonstrate the complete folly, the serious dangers, of continuing to vest in the government powers to spy on and collect data about Americans with no oversight?
What has often amazed me about this debate is that it is conservatives - a group once made up of people who mistrusted the state above all else - who have so vehemently fought for these increased powers. Conservatives don't trust the state to provide us health care, but they thinks it is just fine for bureaucrats and civil servants to have access to all of our personal data. They think regulators always and forever harm business with their misguided actions, but they think they are perfectly trustworthy with data describing our personal affairs. Its not just hypocritical and illogical, its blindingly so.
Throughout human history, any powers granted to government have always been abused. There are few absolute laws about human behavior, but this is one of them. Even the most basic reading of history should convince you of that. Amazing, it was once conservatives who best understood this, and if anything they often carried their mistrust of government too far. But today everything has changed. Today they expect and demand that the government be given unlimited access to our personal communication and our private data. Today they advocate, as Glenn so often points out, a near total and complete surveillance state. Where once they fought against the tactics of Mao and Stalin, today they quite literally advocate for them. And yet simultaneously, they think they are defending the constitution and the American way of life. After all this time, I honestly still do not understand it.
Glenn concludes:
Clearly, though, we can all rest easy that this abuse is confined only to passport files and would never extend to things like warrantless eavesdropping on telephone conversations and reading of emails or unchecked acquisition of personal documents such as health and drug records. In those cases, we can trust political officials to exercise those powers without oversight. Clearly.
UPDATE II: Digby follows Glenn:
This is the problem. Human nature alone dictates that if people can stick their noses in other people's business they will. When there are also the incentives of power (and perhaps, money) it's almost irresistible to some people. That is why the fourth amendment exists -- the enlightenment concept of our inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness depends upon our ability to maintain our privacy.
When you allow your government to become a surveillance state to "protect you" from the "enemy," its inevitable that the power will be misused and will end up encroaching on your freedom and autonomy. The definition of "enemy" after all, is subject to interpretation. If you build a police state, they will use it. (And history shows exactly what that can lead to.)...The government handles vast amounts of information and except for a few intrepid citizens and the ACLU, nobody seems to be too exercised about what they might be doing with it. If anyone thinks they won't possibly use it for political purposes, they're being naive.
Nobody likes slippery slope arguments, but they can also be seen as being properly attentive to the consequences of certain actions. A right to privacy is fundamental to freedom. If we don't strenuously protect it, the consequences are that we won't be free. It's no more complicated than that.
It is foolish to trust the government with the power to surveil American citizens without cause and without safeguards. If random Dept of State contractors are snooping around in passport files and the DoS thinks it mostly just fine, imagine what else is going on that you don't already know about.
If you create the capabilities, they will be used. If you store the data, it will be breached accessed. If you grant the power, it will be misused. We knew this in 1776. We knew this in 1789. We knew this on Sept 10, 2001. Why don't we know it now?
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