9 indicted on charges of accessing Obama records

[Mari333]

Source: Washington Post

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Nine people were indicted Wednesday on federal charges of accessing President Barack Obama's student loan records while they were employed for a Department of Education contractor in Iowa.

The U.S. attorney's office said a grand jury returned the indictments in U.S. District Court in Davenport.

All nine are charged with exceeding authorized computer access. They are accused of gaining access to a computer at a Coralville office where they worked between July 2007 and March 2009, and accessing Obama's student loan records while he was either a candidate for president, president-elect or president.

U.S. attorney spokesman Mike Bladel referred questions to online copies of the indictments.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051204675.html

[tinymontgomery]

1. Good,

Send them to jail and allow them anything to research any thing they want that doesn't break the law.

[dalaigh lllama]

2. Gosh. There must not have been any juicy scandal in them

or I'm sure we'd have seen it 24/7. Wonder who paid them to snoop?

[Mari333]

3. good question

[bigworld]

5. I think it was less snooping than mere curiousity

.. I think the temptation to look up "celebrities" in such a job must be pretty overwhelming.

[proudohioan]

7. I tend to agree with you......

...remember Joe the Plumber? Apparently a bunch of employees at the Ohio DHS looked up his child support records out of curiosity, and it cost some of them their jobs.

[yellowcanine]

21. Maybe but there is no "just curious" exception. Besides it is quite easy to go from

"just curious" to "Hey I found out something really interesting about Obama that I could probably sell to the National Enquirer"

Invasion of privacy is invasion of privacy.

[KansDem]

4. We've come a long way since W was able to bury his Texas state records...

...by getting a new driver's license with a new number.

[Alcibiades]

6. Grassroots Republicans looking for dirt

A dirty tricks squad wouldn't need to pay off nine people.

[POAS]

16. Where's the video of them dressed as pimps?

[proudohioan]

8. I guess none of us have an expectation of privacy anymore...

IMO: our private lives are no longer private, nor do they belong to just ourselves anymore.

:-(

[RedCloud]

9. Off with their heads!

[glinda]

10. And what would student loan records provide?

[kestrel91316]

11. They obviously were looking for proof that he had defaulted on them,

but no such "proof" exists because he didn't??

Either that, or they hoped to find proof that he was born in Kenya......

[JDPriestly]

12. Maybe they wanted his mother's financial information

That's in your loan applications.

[Jim Lane]

17. It's a subculture among the birthers.

When Obama was a child, his mother married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro, and moved to Indonesia. By some accounts, Soetoro adopted Barack, who was known for a time as "Barry Soetoro". Some of the birthers argue that he became an Indonesian citizen and thus lost his U.S. citizenship even if he was born in Hawaii. They want to see all his college records to see if he gained admission or received financial aid as a foreign student.

One fundamental flaw is that, under the law then (and, I think, now), a natural-born citizen couldn't lose U.S. citizenship during his or her infancy, i.e., before becoming an adult. So it doesn't much matter what happened in Indonesia, because Obama was back living in the United States by age 10.

This particular intrusion into the records could have been mere curiosity, or it could have been an attempt to vindicate this birther theory.

[kestrel91316]

18. Minors indeed cannot lose their US citizenship because of the actions of others.

Obama could hypothetically have stayed in Indonesia and when he reached 18 chosen to give up US citizenship IF he indeed was given Indonesian citizenship via his stepfather (which he wasn't), but he didn't.

These people are insane.

[truthisfreedom]

13. Nice warning to the next bunch of snoops.

[Mz Pip]

14. wonder if this will get anywhere

the coverage that the hacking of Palin's email account did.

I doubt it.

[fasttense]

15. Let this be a lesson to all.

No snooping into records of rich and powerful people. The poor and downtrodden, they're still fair game.

[efilon]

19. It was nothing more than curiosity.

There was no "digging" for dirt. Sadly this will impact their lives forever. They lost their jobs in 2008, some are working somewhere else and will lose those jobs. Not to mention the fact that they will have trouble getting any kind of job in the future.

[efilon]

20. One other interesting thing

These people have not heard one word about this except on the news. News says they will be arraigned the 24th yet they have received no notice yet.

[BR_Parkway]

22. Just walking into one of those businesses that have FAUX news on

all the time and telling the owner what they got fired/indicted for will get them hired.