G20 leaders' data revealed in Australian data breach

CANBERRA, Australia, March 30 (UPI) -- Australia inadvertently leaked data about world leaders, including President Barack Obama, prior to a G20 summit in November 2014.

Human error caused the release of passport numbers, visa details and other personal information by the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection. Data on 31 summit-level participants at the meeting in Brisbane, Australia, was sent to organizers of the Asian Cup soccer tournament, an event held in January in Australia, and the data breach was not reported until Monday, when it was reported by the British newspaper The Guardian.

Among those whose information was breached are Russian president Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese President Shinzo Abe.

An internal e-mail sent from the immigration agency to Australia's privacy commissioner in November noted, "The cause of the breach was human error," and that a mistake in the use of the Microsoft Outlook e-mail program "led to the e-mail being sent to the wrong person." The internal e-mail recommended that the world leaders not be made aware of the data breach, which may contravene notification laws in a number of countries.

The exposure of the error is likely to embarrass the Australian government, which last week passed a controversial law requiring telecommunications companies to store certain phone and e-mail messages for two years. The law is causing concern over privacy safeguards in storing the data.

"Only last week the government was calling on the Australian people to trust them with their online data, and now we find out they have disclosed the details of our world leaders. This is another serious gaffe by an incompetent government," said Sarah Hanson-Young of Parliament's opposition Green Party.