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
Loading...
Thank you for registering as a Portfolio.com Insider. Your comment has been added.
Create Your Public Profile- Last Bytes: Next Up, CES
- Jan 7 2009 5:18PM EST
- 60 Million Want Their DTV and Can't Get It
- Jan 7 2009 12:43PM EST
- First Bytes: The New Madoff
- Jan 7 2009 9:26AM EST
- Last Bytes: Apple Happenings
- Jan 6 2009 5:27PM EST
- Apple Plans for iTunes: Signs of Retreat?
- Jan 6 2009 1:40PM EST
- Comcast Mends Its Ways
- Jan 6 2009 12:15PM EST
- First Bytes: Digital TV Conversion Holdup
- Jan 6 2009 8:25AM EST
- Last Bytes: Hacked in 140 Characters or Less
- Jan 5 2009 5:07PM EST
- The Sorry State of Videogames
- Jan 5 2009 2:20PM EST
- Adobe's "Flash Lite" Coming to TV
- Jan 5 2009 10:04AM EST
- Steve Jobs Speaks Out on His Health
- Jan 5 2009 9:55AM EST
- First Bytes: Trade Show Hullabaloo
- Jan 5 2009 8:46AM EST
- Last Bytes: Mogul Feud, Zune Mystery
- Dec 31 2008 2:17PM EST
- On To a New Year
- Dec 31 2008 2:10PM EST
- Creative Commons Flourishing in Recession
- Dec 31 2008 11:59AM EST
Categories
Links
- Mark Cuban's blog

- TechCrunch

- GigaOM

- Engadget

- USA TODAY Tech

- Romenesko

- BuzzTracker Tech

- Roger McGuinn's Folk Den

- Maney's band on MySpace

- Spiedies, mmmm

- Somewhat Frank's tech conference list

- Tom Foremski

- Fred Wilson

- Pandora

- SciTech Daily

- Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

- Steven Johnson

- The Long Tail

- paidContent

- John Battelle's SearchBlog

- Marc Andreessen

- Kevin's site

- Kevin Maney & His Briefs on CD Baby








