President-elect Barack Obama's personal cell phone records were accessed by employees of Verizon Wireless this week, according to a statement released Thursday by President and CEO Lowell McAdam. The account, which has been inactive for several months, was linked only to a cell phone, not a BlackBerry or other smart phone device with data services, such as e-mail.
Lowell said that all employees who accessed the account have been put on paid leave until the matter is investigated further. "Employees who have accessed the account improperly and without legitimate business justification will face appropriate disciplinary action," he said, though he did not specify whether it was grounds for firing or less severe punishment.
The incident illustrates the risks that the National Archives and Records Administration has pointed out to Obama, a well-known BlackBerry enthusiast, about sending e-mail as chief executive. Alexis Simendinger reports in National Journal (subscription) this week on NARA's role in the presidential transition and on the evolution of electronic security in the White House:
Obama will be expected as president to beef up White House attention to data security and preservation. He has promised that his administration will be more transparent and accountable and less secretive than its predecessors. Obama got a taste of how difficult it can be to protect electronic information when his campaign's website and computers were hacked this summer, reportedly by a foreign entity assumed to be Chinese. The Bush White House, which warned the Obama team of the seriousness of the breach, declined to publicly discuss similar hacking into the White House system.
At NationalJournal.com earlier this month, Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, discussed e-mail archiving in the Bush administration, the archive's expectations for the new president, and a lawsuit seeking to hold the Bush administration and NARA accountable for backing up and cataloguing electronic records.
UPDATED Nov. 21 at 11:12 a.m.
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