Panel chastises State Department on passport breaches

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders urged the State Department today to push the Justice Department to pursue criminal prosecutions of agency employees or contractors who may have improperly accessed the passport files of Americans, saying convictions may help prevent abuses.

Comment on this article in The Forum."The use of criminal prosecutions may be as much of a deterrent" as other measures, said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, who said he urged Attorney General Mukasey on Wednesday to pursue such investigations. Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter echoed this call at today's Judiciary Committee hearing and pushed the State Department's acting inspector general to follow-up with the Justice Department to ensure those who may have violated the law are prosecuted.

The issue came drew attention in the spring when it was revealed that State Department contractors had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.

A report released last week by the State Department inspector general examined the records of 150 high-profile individuals and found that the passport files of 127 of them were accessed at least once between September 2002 and March 2008. The report made 22 recommendations to fix the problem, 19 of which State has agreed to implement.

Acting State Inspector General Harold Geisel told lawmakers that one of the key problems facing investigators is that while they can determine if a file has been accessed, the current version of State's Passport Information Electronic Records System does not provide a way to determine if a file was accessed for legitimate purposes. It's also accessible by more than 20,000 government employees and contractors.

A State Department official said following the hearing that unlike the State's PIERS, the IRS taxpayer database provides a field that requires employees and contractors to detail why they are accessing the file before they can obtain it.

Leahy and other lawmakers said such snooping could lead to the loss of personally identifiable data, which could be used for identity theft or other crimes. Geisel said his investigation has found that none of those who accessed passport files did so for financial or commercial gain, nor have any of the victims reported any problems as a result.

Leahy said the issue highlights the need for a privacy bill approved by his panel last year, aimed at preventing data security breaches and providing additional protections for the handling of Americans' private data by federal agencies and government contractors.

Electronic Privacy Information Center Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said he believes if the bill had been in place, the snooping would not have occurred because both the State Department and its contractors would have put in place the appropriate safeguards to prevent unauthorized snooping.