Intellectual Property Law

An unspecified number of Verizon Wireless employees snooped into President-elect Barack Obama?s personal cellphone records, the company announced Friday.

Verizon immediately suspended all employees who accessed the records and will take ?appropriate disciplinary action? against employees found to have looked at them without authorization. 

Obama had a simple flip phone, not a smartphone, meaning the interlopers found only records of phone calls and text messages. The account has been inactive for several months, the company said.

?We apologize to President-elect Obama and will work to keep the trust our customers place in us every day,? Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said in a press release.

Obama already had his passport files snooped into by federal contractors, while an Ohio agency director was suspended Thursday for allowing state employees to search databases for information on Joe the Plumber, the Ohioan who became famous after confronting Obama about his tax policies.

Neither the Obama campaign nor a Verizon Wireless spokesman immediately responded to requests for comment.

Photo: Phu Son/Flickr

See Also:

• Barack Obama's Privacy Challenge
• Data-Breach Post Mortem Offers Surprises
• Passport Snooping Gets Fed Intelligence Analyst Up to Year in Prison