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fringe: Contractors breach Barack Obama's passport file
From: Chris Walsh <chris () cwalsh org>
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:54:26 -0500
The State Department said last night that it had fired two contract employees and disciplined a third for accessing Sen. Barack Obama's passport file. Obama's presidential campaign immediately called for a "complete investigation." State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the employees had individually looked into Obama's passport file on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. To access such a file, the employees must first acknowledge a pledge to keep the information private. The employees were each caught because of a computer-monitoring system that is triggered when the passport accounts of a "high-profile person" are accessed, he said. The system was put in place after the State Department was embroiled in a scandal involving the access of the passport records of then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton in 1992. "The State Department has strict policies and controls on access to passport records by government and contract employees," Casey said. The department uses contract employees to help with data entry, customer service and other administration tasks. The employee involved in the March 14 incident has only been disciplined so far, because the probe of that incident is continuing, an official said. Though the workers were caught by a computer system that focuses on high-profile people, Casey said that a computer report is generated on every access to passport records and that spot checks are taken to ensure that employees are not violating the Privacy Act. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/20/AR2008032003422.html?hpid=topnews [Obviously, these "strict controls" are detective, not preventative.] _______________________________________________ Dataloss Mailing List (dataloss () attrition org) http://attrition.org/dataloss Tenable Network Security offers data leakage and compliance monitoring solutions for large and small networks. Scan your network and monitor your traffic to find the data needing protection before it leaks out! http://www.tenablesecurity.com/products/compliance.shtml
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- fringe: Contractors breach Barack Obama's passport file Chris Walsh (Mar 20)