Azizi and all others: Please observe the Copy and Paste suggestions in the FAQ. The political threads are especially bad right now. A TINY snip and your personal comments with the link only please.

This is absolutely outrageous!!

2 fired over Obama passport file breach
Third employee at State disciplined over accessing candidate's records
NBC News and news services
March 20, 2008

"Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third person was disciplined for inappropriately looking at Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's passport file.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of "imprudent curiosity," which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. He would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined....

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama's presidential campaign, called for a complete investigation.

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes," Burton said.

"This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we 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," he said.

We briefed Senator Obama's office on this issue this afternoon," McCormack said. "That was when senior management first became aware of these incidents."

McCormack said it was not immediately clear what the contract employees may have seen in the records or what they were looking for. He said he did not know the names of the companies they worked for.

The department has informed Obama's Senate office of the breach, and a personal briefing for the senator's staff was scheduled for Friday, McCormack said"...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23736254/