Celebrity Passports Repeatedly Breached

According to a report by the State Department Inspector General, and the subsequent press briefing, a number of high profile celebrities have had their passport information breached.

In March, it was reported that the passport records for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were breached in the same way. This announcement prompted an investigation by the Inspector General into passport security.

The report tested the prevalence of snooping by looking at 150 famous Americans and how many times their files were accessed in a 5.5 year period. The new report found that 127 celebrities, including Beyonce Knowles, have had their personal details illegally accessed by federal employees or contractors. One celebrity record has been breached 356 times by more than 6 dozen people.

Currently, over 20,500 employees and contractors have access to 127 million passport files, which include data such as Social Security Numbers. The report is critical of the lack of security surrounding passports and who has access to them, stating there were many “weaknesses, including a general lack of policies, procedures, guidance and training.” Five contractors have been fired and dozens are under investigation for alleged snooping.

The Inspector General laid out 22 recommendations for improving security, but much of the report has been redacted because officials fear it could provide a road map to further abuse. State Department officials plan to implement most of the recommendations, including adding random audits of passport files and reducing by half the number of people who can view records.

Here’s a video report on that story:

In other passport news, the Identity and Passport Service published its annual report (PDF) recently, announcing that there were 9382 fraudulent attempts to get a British passport, representing 0.25% of all applications.

Via computer weekly, cbs, privacy lives Tags: passports, passport security, inspector general, state department, breach, data breach, government breach