The contact details of at least 15 Australian citizens were included in the «Cc» field of an email. The Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Marise Payne, issued an apology after the identities of some Australian citizens abroad were accidentally disclosed in an email.
“I am very sorry that these events have occurred”, said Payne, speaking to ABC Radio on Friday morning.
This latest incident is the third privacy breach in three months.
This time, according to initial reports by Guardian Australia, the incident occurred when the Australian embassy in Paris sent an email to Australians who had registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) to return home. In the email, the contact details of at least 15 Australian citizens were included in the “Cc” section.
“I have spoken to my ministry secretary about this. We know this is an issue that needs to be addressed. We are trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again and we take full responsibility . I know we are trying to be very careful with people ’s personal information , as we should be, and to uphold our privacy obligations.”
ZDNet contacted DFAT for further comments.
Earlier this month, DFAT issued a similar apology for the disclosure of emails of almost 3,000 Australians that had been placed in the “To” field of an email, instead of the “Bcc” field, according to the Guardian Australia.
More than 32,000 Australians remain overseas. There is currently a weekly limit of 6,000 international arrivals.
Last year, the personal details of 300 Australian visa applicants were accidentally leaked to the wrong email address as a result of a "typographical error".
The ABC report details that the email containing information for 317 people was mistakenly sent to the wrong recipient.
In 2014, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) found that the Home Affairs – former Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) – violated privacy law by disclosing the illegal personal data of citizens when it published the details of approximately 9,250 asylum seekers.
A document containing the full names, gender, nationality, date of birth, location, arrival details by ship and the reasons why the person was considered “illegal” was available on the DIBP website for about eight days, as it remained available on Achive.org for about 16 days.
