Obama's passport records improperly accessed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three U.S. State Department contract employees improperly accessed Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's passport records, a U.S. official said on Thursday.

"There is no indication that there was any political motivation. It (appears to have been) prurient interest," said a State Department official who asked not to be identified. The official said two had been fired and the third disciplined.

A spokesman for Obama called it "an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years."

The U.S. official said that on January 9, February 21 and March 14 of this year, "three different contract workers all individually accessed the passport records for Obama."

When a prominent person's passport records are accessed, it triggers an alarm in the State Department system and the person who accessed the records is questioned, the official said.

"In the first two instances, they were fired. In the third instance, the individual has been disciplined pending review of the incident," the official said.

Bill Burton, spokesman for the Illinois senator, said, "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."

"We demand to know who looked at Senator Obama's passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach."

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Peter Cooney)