Another Department of State employee has been charged with illegally accessing the passport application records of celebrities. Yvette Burrison, a 45-year-old passport specialist who worked from a consular affairs office in Charleston, South Carolina, was named yesterday in criminal information charging her with unauthorized computer access, a felony.
According to the U.S. District Court filing, a copy of which you’ll find here,Burrison improperly accessed the records of “various celebrities, actors, musicians, models, athletes, family members, and other individuals” over a nearly four-year period beginning in January 2003.
Burrison is the fourth Department of State employee to have been charged in recent months with illegally tapping into the Passport Information Electronic Records System. Each of the workers previously charged have cut plea deals and been sentenced to probation.
Now that you’ve had the opportunity to read it, why do you suppose it wasn’t front page or at least news in the main section of the newspaper? Why is it that we at Education, Immigration, and Pop Culture were very much aware of the previous three and not a word was mentioned with this most current one?
