Employees fired for searching Obama file

WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Two U.S. State Department contract employees lost their jobs for looking up Sen. Barack Obama's passport information without authorization.

A third person was disciplined.

A State Department official told NBC News that all employees are reminded whenever they log on to the computer system that the information is protected by the privacy act. Data is available on a "need-to-know basis."

The unauthorized activity occurred on three separate occasions beginning in January, and the most recent occurrence was March 14 NBC said.

"A monitoring system was tripped when an employee accessed the records of a high-profile individual," a State Department official said. "When the monitoring system is tripped, we immediately seek an explanation for the records access. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the supervisor is notified."

The Obama campaign issued a statement Thursday calling the incident an "outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years." The statement said the incident needs to be investigated and demanded to know "who looked at … Obama's file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."