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Victoria's Secret is selling my favorite ever bra (the racerback Emma, if anyone cares) in a lovely shade of light blue. Alas, this is useless to me, as I cannot currently wear underwires.
Vicky's has also decided to sell nursing bras. This is also useless to me, as they sell nursing bras in exactly the same sizes they sell regular bras in, which is to say, too small.
So this thing, with State Department employee's looking at candidate's passport records. So far as I can tell, and my knowledge is imperfect, there is a set of State Department employees who can look at anyone's passport record at any time. They're only supposed to look at those records if they have a good reason for looking, but they have the access and the ability. There is nothing stopping them except their own moral sense. When certain passport records are accessed, flags are sent to supervisors who are supposed to check that the access was... I dunno. Justified? Useful? Not related to figuring out where Angelina Jolie is planning to give birth to her twins?
The problem is that the State Department is staffed entirely by higher primates. If the State Department was staffed by lower primates or Golden Retrievers, odds are that none of them would have gone poking through the system to check out passport records belonging to presidential candidates, movie stars, neighbors, cousins, former spouses or in-laws. (Sidebar: Golden Retrievers have an extremely low divorce rate.) Higher primates, alas, are almost incurably curious.
Condoleeza Rice has promised an investigation into why this access occurred, and why no action was taken about it sooner. Well, I'm all for improving systems, but I'd rather not waste too much government money, so sit down, Condoleeza, and let me make this inexpensive:
State Department employees accessed those records (and no doubt many, many others) because they could. Because they were higher primates, and curious, and because there was nothing stopping them. The supervisors of those employees did not act on the flagged access for one of a number of reasons: because they didn't care, because such flagged access is common as plague, and quite possibly because, when the access occurred, they were gathered 'round the screen with half the rest of the office, saying "Oh! Check McCain!"
I don't know how necessary it is, really, for so many State Department employees to go poking around in passport information whenever they like, and even more, I don't know how necessary it is, really, for the government to have all that information in the first place. The best way to safeguard people's privacy isn't to lock up their personal information in very secure files, it's not to have that information in any kind of files at all.
Vicky's has also decided to sell nursing bras. This is also useless to me, as they sell nursing bras in exactly the same sizes they sell regular bras in, which is to say, too small.
So this thing, with State Department employee's looking at candidate's passport records. So far as I can tell, and my knowledge is imperfect, there is a set of State Department employees who can look at anyone's passport record at any time. They're only supposed to look at those records if they have a good reason for looking, but they have the access and the ability. There is nothing stopping them except their own moral sense. When certain passport records are accessed, flags are sent to supervisors who are supposed to check that the access was... I dunno. Justified? Useful? Not related to figuring out where Angelina Jolie is planning to give birth to her twins?
The problem is that the State Department is staffed entirely by higher primates. If the State Department was staffed by lower primates or Golden Retrievers, odds are that none of them would have gone poking through the system to check out passport records belonging to presidential candidates, movie stars, neighbors, cousins, former spouses or in-laws. (Sidebar: Golden Retrievers have an extremely low divorce rate.) Higher primates, alas, are almost incurably curious.
Condoleeza Rice has promised an investigation into why this access occurred, and why no action was taken about it sooner. Well, I'm all for improving systems, but I'd rather not waste too much government money, so sit down, Condoleeza, and let me make this inexpensive:
State Department employees accessed those records (and no doubt many, many others) because they could. Because they were higher primates, and curious, and because there was nothing stopping them. The supervisors of those employees did not act on the flagged access for one of a number of reasons: because they didn't care, because such flagged access is common as plague, and quite possibly because, when the access occurred, they were gathered 'round the screen with half the rest of the office, saying "Oh! Check McCain!"
I don't know how necessary it is, really, for so many State Department employees to go poking around in passport information whenever they like, and even more, I don't know how necessary it is, really, for the government to have all that information in the first place. The best way to safeguard people's privacy isn't to lock up their personal information in very secure files, it's not to have that information in any kind of files at all.
