Just saw a story on the HuffPo that says that Barack Obama's passport files at the State Department have been breached, on three separate occasions.
It's a little early to comment beyond what I said in the title, but there are a couple of points worth noting.
Senior State officials said on a conference call on Thursday evening that they were informed about the breach by a reporter making an inquiry, not from the lower-level department officials who first discovered the breaches.
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The dates of the breaches were January 9, February 21, and March 14 -- last Friday. Those correspond, as TPM's Josh Marshall noted, to the New Hampshire primary, the Democratic debate in Texas, and the day the Reverend Jeremiah Wright story became major political news.
How the State Department handled the incidents is as noteworthy as the breaches themselves.
According to McCormick, "Senior management from this department first became aware of this today."
The timing of the breaches suggests to me that the official speculation -- idle curiosity on the part of computer technicians -- is reasonable. I also don't have a big problem with the idea that independent contractors (claimed to be properly cleared by the State Department) had access to the files. You have to have extensive access to be able to maintain computer systems properly.
Still, this bears watching. It's also fair to say right off the bat that the State Department's claim of proper safeguards is easily dismissed -- they claim to have in place a system that notified supervisors whenever the "records of a high-profile individual" are accessed, but they're just finding out about the breaches now? And from a reporter, not a State Department employee?
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