U.S. passport office workers snoop into the files of the famous

Washington, Fri, 04 Jul 2008 ANI Washington, July 4 (ANI): An internal State Department investigation has found that employees have accessed the passport information files of dozens of well-known Americans an "excessive" number of times and that the department lacks policies to prevent and detect unauthorized snooping. In a sample of 150 names of politicians, entertainers, athletes and other high-profile citizens, the probe discovered that the files of 127 had been accessed at least once between September 2002 and March 2008, with a total of 4,148 hits, the Washington Times quotes a report by the department's inspector general, as saying. "Although an 85 percent hit rate appears to be excessive, the department currently lacks criteria to determine whether this is actually an inordinately high rate," the report said. Still, it... [read full story]