Another guilty plea in passport snooping spree

The urge to peek into the confidential passport files at the State Department is proving just too much for government employees. In the latest case, an eighth person has pleaded guilty to illegally accessing electronic passport files that are supposed to be confidential.

Susan Holloman, 58, of Washington, D.C., pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of unauthorized computer access. She is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 21. Holloman had worked for the State Department since November 1980 as a file assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, the DoJ said.

Holloman had full access to official agency databases, including the Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS), which contains all imaged passport applications dating back to 1994. Between Feb. 13 and Dec. 5, 2007, she logged onto the PIERS database and repeatedly searched for and viewed the passport applications of 70 celebrities, actors, athletes, musicians and other notables, according to the charges against her, according to the Justice Department.

It's not the first time that curiosity got the better of State Department employees or contractors who have been targeted for prosecution. In 2008, it was disclosed that employees had been looking at the electronic passport files of three presidential candidates: Now-President Barack Obama, current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

An investigation by the State Department's inspector general found that the passports of 150 politicians, entertainers and athletes had been accessed more than 4,000 times between September 2002 and March 2008.

For more on the passport case:
- see this CIO.com article

Related Articles:
More work needed to stop forged passports