Follow up to State Department Acknowledges Unauthorized Access to Passport Records of Presidential Candidates, today’s news release: “Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) today urged the Attorney General to take immediate action to investigate reported breaches of the passport files of the three presidential candidates at the State Department. Attorney General Michael Mukasey stated last week that the Justice Department would await the outcome of an internal investigation at the State Department before taking action.

“We both strongly believe that our government has a duty to protect the private information of its citizens,” wrote Leahy and Specter. “The Justice Department should not wait to be handed ‘a box full of evidence,’ as you said at your recent briefing, before determining whether Federal laws were broken.”

See also Personal Data Privacy and Security Act and Summary of the Leahy-Specter data privacy legislation.