Obama's Mobile Phone Records Compromised, Shared

Tiger4 writes "Verizon has confirmed that some of its employees have accessed and perhaps shared calling records of President Elect Barack Obama (coverage at CNN, Reuters, AP). Verizon says the people involved have all been put on leave with pay as the investigation proceeds. Some of the employees may have accessed the information for legitimate purposes, but others may have been curiosity seekers and may have even shared the information around. The account was 'only' a phone, not a BlackBerry or similar device, and Verizon believes it was just calling records, not voicemail or email that was compromised. The articles do not mention the similarity to the warrantless wiretapping or hospital records compromises of recent months. But that immediately sprang to mind for me."

Comments

Thats OK.

[number17]

Oversight is OK though right? He has nothing to hide.

If he stops the NSA from spying on domestics then I'll take back my comment.

Re:Thats OK.

[tritonman]

This is something new, the citizens wiretapping and spying on the president. I guess we truly will see change with Obama.

Re:Thats OK.

[Panzor]

I have nothing to hide, but my conversations are my business. This is why I encrypt all my volumes and use OTR...

Re:Thats OK.

[aceofspades1217]

Forget Bush's records how about President Cheney's records..

What legitimate purpose?

[BrokenHalo]

Some of the employees may have accessed the information for legitimate purposes

Like what?

I doubt if Obama has any problem paying his phone bill.

Re:What legitimate purpose?

[chill]

Reverse traces.

They were probably investigating a complaint from the Governor's residence in Alaska. All those mysterious calls that would just be insane, taunting laughter, then a hang-up.

Probably just a wrong number, but still, you can never be too sure.

Re:What legitimate purpose?

[jonadab]

> > Some of the employees may have accessed the information for legitimate purposes
> Like what?

Well, that's presumably why they're investigating.

There can be various technical reasons why a support tech or engineer or sysadmin or whoever looks at data that most people would think of as personal, but the engineer isn't seeing what other people are seeing. He's seeing technical stuff other people would never notice. I don't know a lot about phones, because I don't really support those, so I'll use email as an example instead. As a tech guy, I have on a number of occasions had reasons to look at a coworker's email (albeit, usually with their knowledge in my case), but if you'd asked me thirty seconds later who they'd received messages from or what they were about, I'd have had no idea. Maybe I was looking at whether messages were being retrieved from the server all the time in the background, or only when the inbox was open. Maybe I was looking at whether their outgoing messages were getting correct date headers and Message-IDs. Maybe I was sending a test message to myself to see how fast it went through, and the reply back. I'm sure there were other things, and I'm sure I don't remember every occasion, because it's not weird or unusual; it's a normal part of my job duties.

If I *wanted* to surreptitiously read the actual content of my coworkers' email, I would certainly be technically capable of doing that, and could be fairly confident of not being detected. But in the first place that wouldn't be ethical, and in the second place very little is of less interest to me than the content of my coworkers' email messages.

I am not saying the people who looked at Obama's calling records were doing so for legitimate reasons. I'm only saying that it's *plausible*, and the phone company is right to investigate _before_ taking any irrevocable action.

Incidentally, some people may be thinking that paid leave is letting them off easy, but having been through a situation where my employer had someone on paid leave for a while, I can say that in some instances the reason for doing this is because it allows the employer to place some kinds of restrictions on the employee that they wouldn't be able to place on them if they weren't being paid. I don't know for certain that this is the phone company's reason in this case, but it potentially could be. (It could also be they just don't want to penalize them until they investigate and determine for sure whether they did anything wrong. That could also be valid, from a cover-your-legal-self-in-case-of-lawsuits perspective if nothing else.)

This happens often

[QuantumRiff]

My brother worked at T-Mobile for many years. (since before they were T-Mobile). Most Hollywood stars have their agents get their phones for them. One day, something happened in the payment process, and Val Kilmer came into a store to make a payment on his phone, instead of his agent. Suddenly, his number was getting passed all over the company, and many employees (mostly young girls) actually called the number to talk to him. A ton of people were fired, and Val got a very nice check from T-Mobile.

Interesting observation, IMHO

[mapkinase]

Most of the media (for example, NPR on the radio today) talks about "unauthorized access by employees", while /. entry is about "sharing" (which is more sinister).

PS. That and unrelated modest and subdued coverage by CNN about yesterday's record Dow-Jones drop remind me of bias in the media.

freedom of information act

[Anonymous Coward]

While this is improper and wrong, I think that if the government is allowed to wiretap us, then the same laws should make it legal (Freedom of Information Act or something like that) for us to wiretap them. In fact, all government employees' and officials' calls should be recorded and made available for everyone's listening pleasure at a youtube-like site. Call it govtube. Because we are not subservient to the government; it is subservient to us. We put those people in office for our benefit, and so it is our collective right to know what they're doing over there.

Kilmer who?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Never heard of him. You talk as though he was some kind of Super Star like Rajnikant.

Transparency

[xzvf]

Actually you are strangely correct. We should have transcripts of every conversation with lobbyist, campaign contributors, and business relationships. A lack of vision into our corporate and political deal making has lead to many of the abuses over the last decade. If every non-personal conversation by corporate executives and government employees was recorded and made available to the public corruption and graft will be driven further underground.

Re:Transparency

[Kugala]

You're going to trust people that are buying and selling laws to record their conversations?

Re:Data Theft

[Geoffrey.landis]

Really ? The people who illegaly obtained access to "Joe the plumber"'s records, and went on to check all sorts of things on him

["all sorts of things" means, specifically, his driver's record, and whether or not he owed child support]

are still perfectly gainfully employed by the government

And so are these people. Didn't you even read the summary??? Verizon says the people involved have all been put on leave with pay.

"leave with pay" == "still employed." Sounds like a bonus, not a punishment!

I guess it all depends what side you're on.

Apparently not.

Re:Data Theft

[foo12]

Do you think that the President Elect of the United States might have greater personal security concerns than McCain's version of a working class hero? This isn't a matter of "being critical of the president".

Re:Data Theft

[Joce640k]

If he's doing nothing wrong he's got nothing to worry about.

Right?

Joe?

[kenp2002]

Lets see if they get the same slap on the wrist that government employees got for accessing Joe the Plumber's tax records, DMV records, medical records, and other supposedly private information.

Re:Data Theft

[Deitiker]

Just imagine the outrage if someone had broken into one of the candidate's personal email accounts, and posted pictures of their children and private conversations, or...uh...wait...