Fergie's Tech Blog

Passport Records Breach Highlighted by Targets' Prominence

Jaikumar Vijayan writes on ComputerWorld:

It's largely because Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are prominent public figures that the illegal access to their passport records by three contract workers at the U.S. Department of State has come to light.

If the same workers had decided to access the passport records of old girlfriends or were stalking less prominent people, chances are high that they might never have been caught, according to the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

"There's clearly no privacy controls in place other than an alert that comes after the fact for well-known people," said Ari Schwartz, deputy director at the CDT, a Washington D.C-based rights advocacy group. "In my opinion, this sort of violation of the Privacy Act is happening all the time. We only find out about the celebrities and politicians."

posted by Fergie @ 3/21/2008 11:54:00 AM