The Associated Press is reporting that Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman has asked for a federal investigation into whether his Senate campaign donors’ confidential data have been breached.
The campaign first became aware of the possibility of a breach in January but their investigation at the time did not uncover any unauthorized access to the information. On Wednesday night, at least some campaign contributors received emails that suggested that donors’ credit card information was circulating on the internet.
Update: Aaron Blake of The Hill provides additional details:
Coleman backers began receiving e-mails Tuesday night from an e-mail address at wikileaks.org stating that it possessed personal information about them and was preparing to post it online.
The same address stated in an e-mail early Wednesday morning that “we have discovered that all on-line Coleman contributors had their full credit card details released onto the Internet on 28 of [January], 2009, by Coleman’s staff.”
Thanks to Rhonda of Security for the Masses for sending this additional link.