The State Department revealed that the passport files of all three candidates, John McCain, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama had been violated. Unauthorized State Department employees and contractors gained access to the files. Condeleezza Rice personally apologized to each candidate. It looks as if the breaches were not politically motivated but a full investigation is underway.

Senator Obama said to reporters after he learned of the breech:

"One of the things that the American people count on in their interactions with any level of government is that if they have to disclose personal information, that is going to stay personal and stay private, and when you have not just one, but a series of attempts to tap into people's personal records, that's a problem, not just for me, but for how our government is functioning."

We all value our privacy but we may be naïve and overestimate how protected it actually is.

With the advance in technology, almost everything we do today leaves a trace that could be logged in some files. What we buy with a credit card, who we speak with on phone (in some cases, even what we say!) and where we go whether we drive or take public transport is all recorded.

Back in 1977, the U.S. Department of Justice Privacy Commission declared that:

"The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable." This was written long before the development of the Internet we know today.

Ann Ryan once said:

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

We should be very vigilant and protect are privacy as much as it is possible but be reconciled with the idea that one day our privacy most probably will be violated to some degree whether by malicious intent or simply by accident.

We should also make sure that whatever we do, whether in our private lives or professional lives will withstand intense scrutiny that may follow a violation of our privacy.