Persol details of Modi, top world leaders leaked

LONDON, March 30: An email by the Australian immigration department accidentally revealed persol details of world leaders at the last G20 summit, including that of Prime Minister rendra Modi, US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leading British daily reported on Monday.

An employee mistakenly sent the passport numbers, visa details and other persol identifiers of all world leaders attending the summit to the organisers of the Asian Cup football tourment, The Guardian reported.

After the privacy breach was brought to the notice of the director of the visa services division, she contacted the Australian privacy commissioner seeking his urgent advice. “The persol information which has been breached is the me, date of birth, title, position tiolity, passport number, visa grant number and visa subclass held relating to 31 intertiol leaders attending the G20 leaders summit,” the director said in the email, details of which were obtained under Australia’s freedom of information laws, according to the daily.

She attributed the breach to a human error, saying the employee “failed to check that the autofill function in Microsoft Outlook had entered the correct person’s details into the email ‘To’ field”, which led to the email being sent to the wrong person.

“The risk remains only to the extent of human error, but there was nothing systemic or institutiol about the breach,” the director added. According to the officer, it was “unlikely that the information is in the public domain”.

However, the immigration officer went on to recommend that the world leaders not be made aware of the breach of their persol 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,” The Guardian quoted her as saying in the email.

The report did not me the immigration officer.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Office in India chose not to react, but a senior government official said: “We have seen the report and will take necessary action at our end on the matter.” (IANS)