I’m sure by now you’ve all seen the articles regarding the State employees who apparently were satisfying their curiosity regarding Barrack Obama’s passport applications.

BLUF - Two got fired, one got punished, and the whole State Department is sorry to Senator Obama.

Of course, Senator Obama’s campaign chairman is outraged, saying “an outrageous breach of security and privacy.” Congress, of course, has immediately gone into hearing mode - wanting the employees, the contractor supervisors, the companies, the Sec State… haul them all in of course. I mean this is an issue of national importance! (Not!) Secretary Rice called and apologized to Senator Obama.

And of course, the nattering nabobs of stupidity are out saying this was all a Bush plot to ruin Obama - thwarted, of course, by the mysterious hand of fate that protects their idealistic candidate. Why the Bush Administration would want to ruin Obama is unclear - but why the Passport Office would be the ticket to such a ruinous downfall is even more obtuse.

Having worked with people from State Department for a number of years, I guess my thought is - so what. Odds are that these clowns who were snooping about were doing nothing more than satisfying their curiosity on a day where little was happening in Washington. The fact that is missing here is that the system worked -and those employees who were surfing the celebrity passports got found out, and disciplined, rather quickly. Having worked on issues where people “do wrong,” you rarely can stop people from violating policies, but you can work to mitigate the damage and detect malfeasance. It seems here that this is exactly what happened. Thus, claims by Obama’s team that the Bush Administration didn’t care are completely off base - they did care - they did stop the malfeasance quickly - and they expediently disciplined the miscreants who were screwing around. Perhaps Senator Obama would prefer they were brought to the World Court or something? I’m not sure - but it seems to me this was amazingly fast action from the agency who has struggled for years to do anything quickly.

People think their information is private - it’s not, especially not as a government servant, and definitely not when you hold a high level clearance or need high level access. As government employees, as political employees (which I was one), your private information is repeatedly used over and over on everything. The guy from Life Lock is probably more blatant with his “My Social Security Number is…” routine - but I’ll bet political employees were posted more times than his. To go anywhere in the government- your SSN was your ticket to clearances, passes, etc. This has been a problem for awhile - Gen. Shalikashvili and other high ranking generals were victims of identity theft awhile back because thieves stole their information from public documents that they had to file with the Congress. Add things like ZABASEARCH into the mix, and very quickly you can get someone’s name, address, telephone number, and SSN.

We don’t allow our politicals their privacy because we want to avoid the possibility that they engage in corruption. Politicals have to file disclosure forms every year as to all of their financial dealings. Politicals have to have extensive background checks on their lives to ensure they are not subject to compromise. As a government employee - if you travel anywhere - all of your personal information is contained in itineraries, international cable traffic, country clearances, etc. It’s in phone logs, it’s in transaction records. It’s everywhere!

People who hold high level clearances (TOP SECRET or higher) go through extensive, exhaustive, and arduous interviews of virtually everyone they know. Their financial records are checked. Their friends are interviewed. They visit your place of employment and talk your boss and prior bosses. They go through EVERYTHING. And even in some cases, they then give you a polygraph on top of it all! I don’t begrudge them that process one bit - one screw up (like Ames or Hansen) costs innocent people their lives. But once you’ve been through it all, like I have, you have to accept the fact that your information is out there - in government files - scattered throughout the system. What happened to Senator Obama can happen to any government employee - and it’s doubtful that the system will catch someone snooping my records, like they caught the three snooping on Senator Obama’s records.

So I guess my reaction is - so what. The guys were fired… and it was nothing more, most likely, than a bunch of civil servant contractors wanting to pass the time on an Easter week when really nobody is around.

However, if there is a really funny Passport photo of Senator Obama - with like crazy hair or a mugshot like photograph - I’d love to see it. My government passport photo was pretty horrendous as I recall…