MELBOURNE, Australia
The Australian immigration department accidentally disclosed the personal details of world leaders during the last G20 summit, according to a newspaper report Monday.
The Guardian reported that an unnamed employee of the immigration department had inadvertently sent passport numbers, visa details and other personal identifiers of those attending the summit to the organizers of the Asian Cup football tournament.
Among those whose information was exposed were British Prime Minister David Cameron, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Last year’s G20 summit was held in Brisbane. This year's will be hosted by Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in the southwestern province of Antalya Nov. 15-16.
The Nov. 7 disclosure is revealed in a letter to the Australian privacy commissioner from the immigration department's director of visa services division seeking urgent advice.
“The cause of the breach was human error," the director writes "[Unnamed employee] failed to check that the autofill function in Microsoft Outlook had entered the correct person’s details into the email ‘To’ field. This led to the email being sent to the wrong person."
The director adds that the matter was immediately brought to her attention by the employee after the accidental recipient responded saying they had sent the email to the wrong person.
"The personal information which has been breached is the name, date of birth, title, position nationality, passport number, visa grant number and visa subclass held relating to 31 international leaders [i.e. prime ministers, presidents and their equivalents] attending the G20 leaders summit.”
The officer then recommends that the leaders not be made aware of the breach of their personal information.
“Given that the risks of the breach are considered very low and the actions that have been taken to limit the further distribution of the email, I do not consider it necessary to notify the clients of the breach."
To stop any such repeat, the director adds that she will remind staff of their obligations in relation to private client data and how to treat this.
"I will also reinforce the need to double check email recipients before sending emails."
In a statement sent to The Anadolu Agency on Monday, a spokesman for the immigration department underlined that "the breach was immediately referred to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner... [and] the data was immediately deleted by the recipient and was not distributed further."
It added that the department has reviewed and strengthened its email protocols to limit and contain future breaches.
