[Vision2020] 2 Fired Over Obama Passport File Breach

[Tom Hansen]

Breaking news from MSNBC at:

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

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2 fired over Obama passport file breach 
Third employee at State disciplined over accessing candidate’s records

Two contract employees of the State Department were fired and a third 
person was disciplined for accessing passport records of Sen. Barack 
Obama "without a need to do so," State Department officials confirmed to 
NBC News.

The three people who had access to Obama's passport records were contract 
employees of the department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, NBC News has 
learned. The unauthorized activity concerning Obama's passport information 
occurred in January. 

"A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of 
a high-profile individual,” a department official told NBC News. "When the 
monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the 
records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is 
notified."

Explaining why the contractors had access to the files, the official 
said: "The State Department uses cleared contractors to design, build and 
maintain our systems and cleared contract employees provide support to 
government employees and several steps of passport processing including 
data entry, file searches, customer service and quality control.

"Each time an employee logs on, he or she acknowledges the records are 
protected by the privacy act and that they are only available on a need-to-
know basis," the official added.

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Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho



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