Should citizens’ passport info be tightly held?

“They are an essential part of what we do here at the State Department in terms of providing services to the American people, and they’re an essential part of the U.S. government providing the kinds of services that the American people expect their government to provide,” McCormack said.

Last year, the number of passport application requests soared after the January implementation of new rules that required air travelers from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda to present passports. The State Department went from issuing some 12 million passports in 2006 to 18 million in 2007.

As the backlog worsened, the State Department took drastic and expensive measures, even paying some employees to return to the U.S. from overseas to help handle the paperwork. Anticipating the influx of requests to continue, the department hired contractors too.

“In order to deal with 18 million passports a year, we require lots of people to have access because it’s compartmentalized in the sense that different people perform different functions, including recording if someone advises that their passport has been lost or stolen,” said Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management officer.

Passport system maintains other records
It remains unclear as to exactly what the contractors might have seen. Passport applications typically contain only basic personal information such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth. The files generally would not list countries the person has traveled to, agency officials said.

However, Passport Services maintain other records too, according to a Jan. 9 notice in the Federal Register. The federal notice says such information as marriages overseas, court orders, arrest warrants and medical and financial reports may also be contained within the system.

Further, outside “users” may be given access to information in these files, including other government agencies and foreign governments. In the case of foreign governments, the records would be accessed primarily to aid in law enforcement, immigration and fraud prevention, the notice states.

There are about 180 million to 200 million records in the passport system, according to the State Department.

The two companies that provided the workers for the State Department — Stanley Inc., of Arlington, Va., and The Analysis Corp., or TAC, of McLean, Va. — have said their employees’ actions were unauthorized and not consistent with company policies.

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