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Tuesday November 25, 2008
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A Vermont senator wrote to the Justice Department Monday expressing concern about the recent breach of President-elect Barack Obama's cell phone records.
"Cell phone records provide a wealth of sensitive personal data that can be of great use to criminals, and the unauthorized disclosure of these records can further acts of domestic violence and compromise the safety of law enforcement officers and their families," Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote in a letter to Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew W. Friedrich.
Verizon Wireless admitted last week that several employees had improperly accessed a now inactive account belonging to Obama. The company has reportedly terminated employees involved in the breach.
Leahy, however, is concerned that the Justice Department is not adequately enforcing the 2007 Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, of which he was a co-sponsor.
The bill, among other things, bans telecom providers from accessing confidential phone records by accessing customer accounts through the Internet, or by fraudulent computer-related activities, without prior authorization.
"Given the growing threat to privacy posed by phone records breaches, please provide information regarding the number of prosecutions and/or investigations that the Department has undertaken to date pursuant to the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act," Leahy requested. "Please also state whether the Department has found this statute effective in protecting Americans' privacy."
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November 25, 2008 4:45 PM
Where was Mister Leahy and his outrage when the press and everyone else was tearing into Joe the Plumbers personal life, all for asking a question?
Hypocrisy at its finest.
November 25, 2008 7:43 PM
@aldo: the difference there is that no one broke the law when digging into Joe's personal life. It's hardly hypocritical.
Politics aside, I think it makes some measure of sense - only a few years ago we were asking the questions of what telecommunications companies really do with the vast amounts of data they keep about where we go on the Web, who we call, who calls us, and so on. It may be innocuous and it may not be, the data may be used in ways we like or ways we don't - the point is that we don't know, and I think it's important that government, as representative of the people, find out.
At the very least they can see if the privacy concerns that have been raised about that data collection are warranted or not.
November 26, 2008 1:48 PM
@aldo: the difference there is that no one broke the law when digging into Joe's personal life. It's hardly hypocritical.
Uh, yeah, they did. A number of public officials abused their access to dig up dirt on Mr. The Plumber, such as his taxes owed.
November 26, 2008 2:01 PM
@Andrew: Joe's back taxes were part of a public and open case against him for which he owed back taxes. It's a matter of civil record, for which any citizen could search their local circuit or county judicial record. Additionally, no public officials were involved in the disclosure of that information - it was entirely the media. I could be wrong though, so if you have sources to back up the assertion that someone broke the law, please share them.
Frankly, if laws were broken with regard to Joe (which is really a strawman, the fact is someone broke the law in the case of the cell phone records, and this looks like a case of trying to claim it's not AS illegal because someone did something bad to someone else too), I'd be the first person to call for an investigation. But the fact is, no laws were broken, and no policies were violated.
Back to point however, both that case and this case call to issue the matter of privacy of our electronic data, which is almost always at risk the more someone wants to know about us.