Passport records breached by contractor … who works for Obama advisor? from Hot Air reports that the third contractor who breached the passport files of both Senators Obama and McCain in fact works for an Obama advisor – the plot…

ARLINGTON, Va., March 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Stanley, Inc. (NYSE: SXE), a leading provider of systems integration and professional services to the U.S. federal government, today announced that it was awarded a five-year, $570 million contract to continue support of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs/Passport Services Directorate.

A modicum of due diligence would at least dictate that any company receiving such a huge contract would undergo a performance review. And it would also seem, particularly in this day and age, that part of that performance review would include a look into compliance with security measures.

Makes you wonder who Stanley has in their pockets on the Hill.

Stanley, Inc., is headquartered in Arlington, Va. The State Department awarded it a contract for $164 million in 2006, to print and mail millions of new U.S. passports. Stanley announced on Monday that it was awarded an additional $570 million contract to “continue support of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs/Passport Services Directorate.”

Since when is your SSN top secret?

Your SSN isn’t top secret – it’s confidential. Any institution or business that gets your SSN is supposed to keep it confidential, not plaster it all over the place for everyone to see. It is no longer printed on Louisiana driver’s license, even though the DL office has it. Your employer has it in order to properly report your wages and taxes (official business), but they should have some system of maintaining confidentiality of employee records where the SSN appears.

I think these folks looked at these records strictly out of curiosity. The bottom line is that when a governmental entity “contracts” work out to a private company, the employees of that company have access to confidential information and should be trained on how to properly and ethically deal with those records – but they don’t get that training. The gov’t should contract out as little work as possible – but instead, contracts are big big business when they shouldn’t be.

Even though your SSN is not to be used for identifcation HA HA !!!, Try to open a bank account, get a driver license, get paid by your employer, etc without giving out your SSN. You must give your SSN or tax number to even pay your Federal and State income taxes.

One need not go to your Passport for obtaining your SSN.

If there was an intrusion to the Passports, I would think there was some reason other than getting a SSN to look at the Passport information.

On March 21st, 2008 at 1:58 pm, graysonret said:
Well, all 3 candidates got their passport files breached. Sounds equal to me. No racism or discrimination there. Can’t have 1 candidate having an unfair advantage over the others.

On March 21st, 2008 at 3:19 pm, gandolphxx said:
The only thing in the stupid files that is not public knowledge for these three is their social security number – BFD.

So all three have been breached it’s equal. I know there are some whackos out there, but how far would someone get trying to open credit cards in any of these names. Even if they did, I would hope they have protection on their accounts.
Much ado about nothing.