Mar 21 2008
State Department: Peek-a-boo!
Just what is going on over at the State Department…
All three major presidential candidates have had their passport files breached, the State Department confirmed Friday.
Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain were informed that their files were improperly accessed, after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized to Barack Obama for a similar violation.
“We do feel that the system worked, but the system isn’t perfect,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at a briefing Friday afternoon.
Obama’s campaign called the breach of his records “outrageous” when the news was first brought to their attention Thursday, and even suggested political motives were behind it. But Friday morning the case swiftly expanded.
McCormack said the individual who accessed Obama’s files also reviewed McCain’s file. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but not fired.
The State Department already fired two contract employees for inappropriately examining Obama’s file on three separate dates this year.
My first thought about this entire business is, “Why do outside government contractors have access to these files in the first place?”
My second thought stems from State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, “We do feel that the system worked”. No, sir, the system did not work. These are very high level, very public people. Indeed, the breach occurred with all three Presidential candidates, and it is very disturbing the laxity in which this occurred. “Contractors”, not government employees viewed these files. Heck, one of them viewed them on something as casual as a training exercise.
I personally don’t like how our government has outsourced so much of its duties to “contractors”. We do it to defense technologies, to our military by hiring mercenaries— it seems to be the trend on multiple levels of government. And when something goes wrong, as it almost invariably will, it’s not the government’s fault for resorting to contractors. It’s the contractors’ fault for not behaving as the government would have them behave.
What a crock.
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