Well, at least the State Department is an equal opportunity invader of privacy.

From CNN:

The State Department said Friday that all three presidential candidates' passport files were breached.

Sen. Barack Obama's passport file was breached three times since January, the State Department said.

The admission comes after it was revealed Sen. Barack Obama's files had been viewed three times by contractors. One of the contractors also viewed the files of Republican Sen. John McCain, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Earlier Friday, Sen. Hillary Clinton's office said that the State Department had notified it that her file had been breached in 2007.

These revelations come on the same day that Condoleezza Rice apologized to Barack Obama for yesterday's news that his passport file had been breached by State Dept. contractors.

"I told him I was sorry and I told him that I myself would be very disturbed in anyone had looked at my passport files and that, therefore, I will stay on top of this," Rice said.

"We are going to do an investigation through the inspector general," she said. "None of us want us to have a situation where any American's passport file is accessed in an unauthorized way."

Umm, ya think?

The State Department thus far has refused to reveal the names of the companies whose employees breached the presidential candidates' files in their capacity as State Dept contractors. Waxman is on it.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Harry Waxman, sent a letter to Rice asking for the companies' names and said they should be made public.

The department hires contractors to design, build and maintain their systems and help employees with searches. McCormack said two of the contractors in the Obama case were "low-level" personnel and the other was in a mid-level position with no management role.

The Clinton and McCain campaigns are being briefed on the breaches to their files today. What's more remarkable than the fact that these breaches occurred is how long it's taken for them to come to light. The Clinton breach took place last year, which makes one wonder just how many other candidates' files were compromised.

From a CNN alert:

The State Department says security on Barack Obama's passport file has been breached, campaign officials tell CNN.

DailyKos diarist Scoopster has more via Keith:

The Dept. of Justice has launched an investigation into the compromising of Sen. Obama's passport data file by two contract employees at the State Department.  A third has been disciplined for accessing the information without necessity.

Cycloptichorn has more in the diaries:

Keith is citing a release from State that the breach occurred on three different occasions, on 9 January, 21 February and 14 March.  They also are saying there is no political motivation behind this breach, it was "...simply curiosity..."

Ah, sure, what's a little benign snooping among spooks? No biggie. How pathetic.

The Obama campaign took the opportunity to slam the Bush administration for presiding over a government that breaches citizens' security rather than protecting it.

"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

Nice.

Update [2008-3-20 21:3:16 by Jonathan Singer]: You think this was the first time that a Bush State Department was caught spying on a Democratic presidential candidate? Think again. Here's The New York Times Robert Pear in November 1992:

A State Department official who carried out the two-day search of passport files for information about Gov. Bill Clinton said today that he had resigned, just 48 hours before Federal investigators are expected to issue a report criticizing the search.

The official, Steven M. Moheban, was a top aide to Elizabeth M. Tamposi, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs who was dismissed last week by President Bush for her role in the search of files on Mr. Clinton, his mother, Virginia Kelley, and Ross Perot, the independent Presidential candidate.

[...]

Ms. Tamposi has said that White House officials encouraged the search of Mr. Clinton's records and that her superiors approved it. The inspector general has interviewed White House officials. But it is not clear whether he will assign any responsibility for the search to senior officials at the White House and the State Department, or will merely focus on Ms. Tamposi and lower-ranking employees.

Is this really the we do things in the United States?

[editor's note, by Todd Beeton]I had updated the post with info from Cycloptichorn's diary -- restored above -- but it got lost in the updating madness. Sorry about that.

An Ethiopian court sentenced 35 opposition politicians and activists to life in prison on Monday, AP reports. The prosecution had asked for the death penalty against the defendants, who included Ethiopia's top opposition leaders.

Those sentenced to life imprisonment include the leader of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy, Hailu Shawel; Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa; former Harvard scholar Mesfin Woldemariam; and former U.N. special envoy and former Norfolk State University professor, Yacob Hailemariam.

Human rights groups condemned the trial as an attempt to silence government critics, and opposition leaders have claimed it was politically motivated.

Where is the U.S. State Department in all of this? Absent without leave.

Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy, December 28, 2006

The State Department, in a "rare public rebuke," criticized Israeli government plans to build a new settlement in the West Bank, the New York Times reports

"We are aware of reports about the Maskiot settlement," said a State Department spokesperson. "The establishment of a new settlement or the expansion of an existing settlement would violate Israel's obligations under the road map."

"The U.S. calls on Israel to meet its road map obligations and avoid taking steps that could be viewed as pre-determining the outcome of final-status negotiations," the spokesperson said.