The Whistle of a Distant Train

EJ Dionne has a quick blog in the Post today about the breach of Barack Obama's passport information by a number of State Department contractors . He finds it particularly troubling that privatecontractors were able to rifle through the government's databases, looking at things such as social security numbers, travel histories and perhaps potentially damaging information about political candidates. Soon thereafter, it had also come to light that Hillary Clinton's passport information had also been breached. This begs the question: because of a lack of effective oversight and the devolution of the functions of government to private entities, are we encouraging the misuse of Federal resources towards potentially partisan political objectives? Even if there were no particularly malicious political intentions present, from a civil liberties perspective, how do you feel about private contractors being able to look through government databases?