One administration official said the FBI is conducting a preliminary inquiry into the officials involved in the unauthorized access incidents related to Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat. An FBI spokesman could not be reached for comment.
In this case, it does not appear that records were copied or altered, Mr. McCormack said.
Passport application data includes such details as date and place of birth, e-mail address, mailing address, Social Security number, former names and travel plans.
Mr. McCormack said the officials accessed Mr. Obama’s records “without a need to do so.”
“In each case, we immediately contacted our contractors, their employer, and two were fired and one was disciplined,” he said.
“We have strict rules restricting access to passport records,” Mr. McCormack said.
Each time an employee logs on to the passport-records network, they are informed that the records are protected by the Privacy Act and are “available only on a need-to-know basis,” he said. But no technical bar prevents a person, once he is in the system, from gaining access to Privacy Act-protected records to which he has no “need-to-know” rights.
But the network has an electronic monitoring system that is tripped when an employee accesses a record of a prominent person, like Mr. Obama. The alarm then triggers an inquiry into the incident, and “when the answer is not satisfactory, a supervisor is notified.”
Andrea Mitchell is not pleased.
Each time an employee logs on to the passport-records network, they are informed that the records are protected by the Privacy Act and are “available only on a need-to-know basis,” he said. But no technical bar prevents a person, once he is in the system, from gaining access to Privacy Act-protected records to which he has no “need-to-know” rights.
But the network has an electronic monitoring system that is tripped when an employee accesses a record of a rominent person, like Mr. Obama. The alarm then triggers an inquiry into the incident, and “when the answer is not satisfactory, a supervisor is notified.”
LOL and if the person is not prominent I guess their is no alarm and no inquiry even thought the private records have been breached! Someone high up needs to loose their job over this.