I am second to none in my indignation at the breach of Obama and now maybe Hillary's passport files. But here's the thing: what was the point? I mean, what interesting information could you possibly learn from the passport records of people whose every move is public record? To be sure, I wouldn't want people looking at my passport photos . . . but I wouldn't really want to look at anyone else's, either.
That doesn't excuse the people who did it: prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and all that. But still I wonder . . . why?
Curiosity + Information at Their Fingers = Internet - Passport Breach
Curiosity is almost certainly the explanation. I bet if one takes a deeper look at the records of other celebrities, one will find other breaches.
I worked at a life insurance company that had policies with various celebrities, including Dale Earnhardt. When he died they had to pull the file from the network to keep people from looking at them.
Same reason that there are shows and magazines dedicated to revealing where celebrities by their groceries and what they did over the weekend I guess.
Because they could.
It's politics, Megan. Plain and simple. Anything to use to undermine your opponent is acceptable to these people since substance doesn't count for much.
They also looked at McCains. Know what they found? He made a trip to a communist country in the 60's and stayed for an extended period. (without a visa or the permission of the US government)
(fyi stolen from an Insty post commenter)
They also looked at McCains. Know what they found? He made a trip to a communist country in the 60's and stayed for an extended period. (without a visa or the permission of the US government)
(fyi stolen from an Insty post commenter)
They also looked at McCains. Know what they found? He made a trip to a communist country in the 60's and stayed for an extended period. (without a visa or the permission of the US government)
(fyi stolen from an Insty post commenter)
Probably the same reason I looked up famous places on Google Earth...I was bored and had access to the info. I'd give this whole "scandal" a three on the outrage scale.
I agree with you Megan, but isn't this a piece of information that could be public like how we demand that Politicians release their tax returns?
New twist: The employees who peeked were contracted from companies run by Obama and Clinton donors.
link to CNN + rambling on my blog
What info is in these records? The records of my travels are all stamped in my passport, not a filing cabinet in DC.
Any use/contact you would have had with u.s. embassies or consular offices in a foreign country would be in your file (according to Hillary Mann on Countdown this last Friday) - so if you needed to get bailed out, had some medical issue, etc., that would be in your file. And it wouldn't be in your passport stamps.
Keep in mind that as a US citizen and a minor living abroad, Obama's file would include info from his consular personal records. Given the previous interest in his schooling in Indonesia, a consular file would be the first place to look if you thought some part of his personal story was missing from the public record.
Moreover, even for US citizens the list of things kept in your "passport records" can be quite extensive. Via the Federal Register (January 9, 200), here's a partial list of what might be in those files:
Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present, as well as vital records related to births abroad, deaths, and witnesses to marriages overseas. The passport records system does not maintain evidence of travel such as entrance/exit stamps, visas, or residence permits, since this information is entered into the passport book after it is issued.
The passport records system includes the following categories of records:
Passport books and passport cards, applications for passport books and passport cards, and applications for additional visa pages, amendments, extensions, replacements, and/or renewals of passport books or cards (including all information and materials submitted as part of or with all such applications);
Applications for registration at American Diplomatic and Consular Posts as U.S. citizens or for issuance of Cards of Identity and Registration as U.S. Citizens;
Consular Reports of Birth Abroad of United States citizens;
Certificates of Witness to Marriage;
Certificates of Loss of United States Nationality;
Oaths of Repatriation;
Consular Certificates of Repatriation;
Reports of Death of an American Citizen Abroad;
Cards of Identity and Registration as U.S. citizens;
Lookout files which identify those persons whose applications for a consular or related service require other than routine examination or action; and
Miscellaneous materials, which are documents and/or records maintained separately, if not in the application, including but not limited to the following types of documents:
[cir] Investigatory reports compiled in connection with granting or denying passport and related services or prosecuting violations of passport criminal statutes;
[cir] Transcripts and opinions on administrative hearings, appeals and civil actions in federal courts;
[cir] Legal briefs, memoranda, judicial orders and opinions arising from administrative determinations relating to passports and citizenship;
[cir] Birth and baptismal certificates;
[cir] Court orders;
[cir] Arrest warrants;
[cir] Medical, personal and financial reports;
[cir] Affidavits;
[cir] Inter-agency and intra-agency memoranda, telegrams, letters, and other miscellaneous correspondence;
[cir] An electronic index of all passport application records created since 1978, and some passport application records created between 1962 and 1978;
[cir] An electronic index of Department of State Reports of Birth of American Citizens abroad; and/or
[cir] Records of lost and stolen passports.
That was the Federal Register on January 9, 2008 - not 200. Lost the "8" in that last post somehow. Sorry!
If they had found something interesting they could have sold it to the news organization of their choice.
This is not like medical records. Privacy freaks need to back off and think a little. Yes, curious little apparachniks nosing around using their government privilege is unwelcome....BUT....shouldn't we have a record of where candidates for high office went abroad and what they did???
Each country, stay, arrival method, departure method, any trouble they got in while there?
Examples:
Senator X, running for re-election had the following countries visited in the last 10 years: France, Switzerland (9 visits - 6 by private Lear jet), Cayman Islands (11 visits by private jet), Brazil (3 for Carnival),Liberia, South Africa, Italy, Israel (3 visits), Iraq (3 well-publicized visits), Saudi Arabia (9 visits by private oil company corporate jet, not publicized at all.)
Or, Governor Y was abroad on several trips and was arrested in Haiti at age 37, 8 years before becoming Governor - when she was found in a hotel room with 3 underage Haitian girls. Consul notified. Charges dropped on a satisfactory settlement with the 3 girl's families. Nothing appears on her US arrest record.
Voters should know what foreign visits or activities, good & bad, the people they are voting for were involved in. It should also be part of the record Congress looks at when appointing staff or confirming appointments to the Executive or the Judiciary.
This isn't ultra super secret shit like records of Obama's rectal exams or Hillary being treated for oral gonorrhea.
People are wildly speculating. All the other stuff your commenters have listed is NOT in the file. All it contains is a scanned copy of the DS-11 or DS-82 form that you fill out in order to get a new passport. If you had a name change since your last passport, it may also include a copy of the documentation supporting that change of name (for example, a marriage license).
It does NOT contain your travel records (those are in DHS computers), history of your interaction with the US Embassy or Consulate (that's in a separate State Dept system), or anything else about your overseas life/travels/connections.
This is all about someone who had access to a computer system being curious and looking up a record. No, he/she shouldn't have, but really there's nothing that special about it. Honestly, do you think the DMV clerks in Illinois haven't looked up Obama's driver license application just for kicks now that he's famous?
Because knowledge is power. And petty bureaucrats crave power.
Only just glancing at the story, my prev experience as a petty bureaucrat leads me lean much more towards "curiosity + boredom" as an explanation than a "craving" for power.
Yes, it's the grand bureaucrats who crave power. The petty ones crave a short work week, low performance standards, and overly generous retirement after 20 years.
What's interesting is that they had the access logs of show who looked at the files. I worked in the datacenter of a Fortune 500 company for a couple of summers while in college, and they were just starting to put access logs on sensitive files. It was trivial to look up compensation info if you had the right access, and in the datacenter, we had access to everything.
I know that insurance companies have longstanding controls on access to insurance records to allow audits of all changes to electronic records, but as more and more data becomes web-accessable, those audit trails become more expensive to keep.
Yes, that's the hard to believe part of the story - that the government did something right and put access logs on the files.
The problem for politicians is that they talk, talk, talk all the time, and when they talk they say things that can be true or false or somewhere in between. With today's technology all this talk is recorded. People have access to it and can mine it for information. If there is any verifiable source of information that can be cross-checked against the megabytes of BS, then inconsistencies can be found. It might be discovered, for instance, that your candidate was not within 20 clicks of the Cambodian border on Christmas of 1968, or whatever. Or, say, if you can get your target to fork over a schedule of events, you might discover that said target was scheduled to speak at the VFW where three legless veterans were waiting, only to cancel for a $400 haircut in Reno. That would be killer! Can you imagine how an interview with those vets might come across?
What you do is list all the known facts on one side of the page and all the candidates claims on the other. Doesn't matter whether its pos, neg or interesting, as long as it conflicts. Then you can spin it somehow. You don't really need a genuine contradiction, you could just make it up, but it's more fun when you can get a real soundbite.