Verizon Employees Caught Snooping on Obama's Phone Records

An unspecified number of Verizon Wireless employees snooped into President-Elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone records, the company announced Friday.

Verizon immediately suspended all employees who accessed the records and will take "appropriate disciplinary action" against employees found to have looked at them without authorization. 

Obama had a simple flip-phone, not a smartphone, meaning the interlopers found only records of phone calls and text messages. The account has been inactive for several months, the company said.

"We apologize to President-Elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day," Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said in a press release.

Obama already had his passport files snooped into by federal contractors, while an Ohio agency director was suspended Thursday for allowing state employees to search databases for information on Joe the Plumber, the Ohioan who became famous after confronting Obama about his tax policies.

Neither the Obama campaign nor a Verizon Wireless spokesman immediately responded to requests for comment.

by Ryan Singel for Wired.com

Also on Wired.com:
iPhone 2.2: Podcast Downloader and Street View
Gallery: Phooey to Fuel Economy--10 Cars That Just Don't Care
Seven (More) Gadgets Killed by the Cellphone

Subscribe to Wired magazine