Major Human Error Fail: Australia Unwittingly Releases Passport Details Of Obama, Other G20 Leaders; White House Investigates

The White House is now hot on the heels of the Australian Immigration Department after reports flaunted the agency had accidentally released personal details of U.S. President Barack Obama as well as other G20 leaders that were contained in their respective passports. The incident happened before the 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal details were left open.

The information that was accidentally leaked included the G20 leaders’ passport numbers, dates of birth and visa details. An unidentified Immigration Department official from Australia had mistakenly emailed them to a member of the Asian Cup Local Organising Committee.

Eric Schultz, White House press secretary, confirmed an investigation has been opened into the matter. "I can tell you that we're looking into them and we'll take all appropriate steps necessary to ensure the privacy and security of the president's personal information," he told reporters on Air Force One.

The Australian bureaucrat reportedly failed to double check the autofill feature in Microsoft Outlook that’s why the accidental leakage occurred. A report by The Guardian said the mishap was immediately reported by the department to the privacy commissioner less than 10 minutes after the email was sent. The email recipient from the Asian Cup football tournament acknowledged the wrongly sent information, and had told the department he had deleted it and that there was no other copy.

Others who attended the 2014 G20 summit, apart from Messrs Obama and Putin, included German chancellor Angela Merkel, Chinese president Xi Jinping, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Indonesian president Joko Widodo, and British prime minister David Cameron. The summit involved a total of 31 international leaders.

The Guardian, citing an email sent to the commissioner’s office, obtained under Australia’s freedom of information laws, reports the cause of the breach was “human error.”

“[Redacted] 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 email added it was the person who did the mistake brought the matter to his/her higher ups. “The matter was brought to my attention directly by [redacted] immediately after receiving an email from [the recipient] informing them that they had sent the email to the wrong person.”

The letter writer believed the information given to the Asian Cup local organising committee is not accessible, recoverable or stored anywhere else in their systems. The person noted it was “unlikely that the information is in the public domain.

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