Passports of Rich & Famous on View

When the candidates' file breaches were revealed, the State Department said that its warning system had worked, pointing out that alarms were triggered when the senators' files were accessed. However this report says those controls are inadequate.

The IG report says the warning system was "very limited in the number and types of individuals captured. For example, the list contained the names of 38 of about 127 million passport holders and excluded many other high-profile individuals, including key political figures, celebrities, and other prominent people frequently mentioned in the media."

To conduct the study the Office of Inspector General formulated its own list of 150 famous people, using lists of influential Americans in publications like Forbes magazine and Sports Illustrated.

The search looked for whether the individuals' files were accessed between September 2002 and March 2008.

The State Department's bureau of Consular Affairs has received recommendations from the IG and has already taken some steps, including dismissing some personnel.

The bureau has increased the number of oversight monitors from two to eight and has slashed the number of employees with access to the records in half, including barring those whose accounts have remained inactive for 90 days.

Consular Affairs has also boosted the number of names that trigger an automatic review when their records are accessed from 38 to more than 1,000.

The report recommends that Consular Affairs implement controls similar to ones used by the Treasury Department and the IRS to safeguard tax information. It says that Consular Affairs has agreed to implement this recommendation.

Consular Affairs rejected a recommendation to develop new guidelines to discipline workers who accessed the files without permission, according to the report.