They say curiosity killed the cat. In this case, apparently curiosity fired some Verizon employees…

Some curious workers at the Big Red V apparently realized they had access to some of the call logs and records of a phone owned by President-Elect Barack Obama, and decided to sneak a peak.

According to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, they had “without authorization, accessed and viewed President-elect Barack Obama’s personal cell phone account”, however he assured the public that while such records could include the recipient, sender, or time and length of a call, it would not include personal information such as the content of text messages or voice mails.

Still, this can and should be considered a very serious breach of privacy and security, and Verizon has responded appropriately. After a suspension of anyone having access to the information, a Verizon source told CNN that some employees have been fired during the investigation. The source would not reveal how many people were terminated, but said “we now consider this matter closed.”

Still, it makes you wonder. After the Paris Hilton Sidekick scandal over 3 years ago (and other similar stories over the years), how much trust should we really be putting in the mobile space?

Am I the only one who freaked out a little when the CDMA standard mandated that all phones have built-in GPS chips? Sure, they claim it was for e911 calls, but the potential is there for unscrupulous employees to “sneak a peek” at where you’re hiding.

I’m no doomsday theorist, but the more connected we all become, the more I wonder how private our lives really are becoming…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.