The new Watergate?

the_x5the_x5 the Xzianthian Join Date: 2004-03-02 Member: 27041Members, Constellation
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">State Dept. scandal involving Obama passport docs being accessed</div>I know there are semi-frequent breaches in private date in corporations that aren't well reported (if it all) when they happen when they should be regarding risk of identity theft... But usually these aren't high profile individuals.

I can also only see two possible motivations for these two (now fired) govt. employees:<ul><li>individual curiosity / stupidity</li><li>political reasons</li></ul>
Am I the only one who finds this outrageous?
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Comments

  • ThansalThansal The New Scum Join Date: 2002-08-22 Member: 1215Members, Constellation
    Link? (aka, wth are you talking about)
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  • locallyunscenelocallyunscene Feeder of Trolls Join Date: 2002-12-25 Member: 11528Members, Constellation
    edited March 2008
    He's talking about 2-3 gov't employees looking at Barack Obama's passport file without authorization. Last I heard it was speculated that the cause was curiosity and not politically motivated. There's an investigation going now.

    I'm inclined to believe it was curiosity more than anything. I worked in my alumni association for a while entering personal data and the person before me had gotten fired for using the tools to find out Justin Timberlake's home address. I can believe a bored passport office employee would take a look at the file out of curiosity. I'm glad there's an investigation into the matter though.

    I'll add a link the article here when I find it.
    <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2060561020080321?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews" target="_blank">Link</a>[reuters.com](The bit about passports starts in the fourth paragraph)<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/21/obama.passport/index.html?eref=rss_topstories" target="_blank">
    Link2</a>[cnn.com](Link talks about all 3 candidates passport files "breached".)
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  • ThansalThansal The New Scum Join Date: 2002-08-22 Member: 1215Members, Constellation
    after poking around I would have to agree with locally. It just sounds like a couple people that were overly curious.
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  • lolfighterlolfighter Snark, Dire Join Date: 2003-04-20 Member: 15693Members
    <inthert conthpiwathy thewy>
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  • tjosantjosan Join Date: 2003-05-16 Member: 16374Members, Constellation
    There was a case during the eighties in Sweden where a nurse accessed and read through a famous union guy's medical records because she got curious. She went to jail and got fired.

    Rawr.
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  • ThansalThansal The New Scum Join Date: 2002-08-22 Member: 1215Members, Constellation
    after having seen a bit more on this I am kinda amused by the entire thing.

    There is a huge point being made that the higher ups knew nothing about it. My thought is that this is 100% SOP for them. Silly contractors check on celebs (and presidential candidates are celebs) all the time and either get fired for disciplined, just like it happened this time. You don't expect the CEO of a company to get involved b/c some contractor did something stupid that happens relatively regularly, do you?

    As for this happening regularly? well, there really is no way of stooping it aside from letting it be known that if you are poking around where you shouldn't be you WILL get caught and fired.

    An example is that I work for a college, I have access to all of the student records, and could do some drastic things there. only one problem: All of my actions are logged, and they WILL catch me out. Oh, and if I was caught, I would be fired and carted away by the cops <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
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