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Oh ho! Last night we learned that the kids at the State Department simply couldn’t bear their curiosity about Barack Obama’s passport file — it was just sitting there, after all, behind a password-protected encrypted firewall; you can hardly blame them. It turns out Obama wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose travels proved an insatiable temptation to three government contractors with too much time and access on their hands; one of them also read passport files belonging to Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Sneaky! In a press conference just now, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the files were accessed during a training session in which it was suggested contractors look up a relative to familiarize themselves with the computer program. Seriously, we get that this is a breach of national security or whatever, but if you were sitting in front of a State Department computer under instruction to try out security software on someone, would you really pick your Aunt Marjorie who’s never left the state of Wisconsin? Come on now. —Maggie Shnayerson
