Philippines Passport – All Data has vanished!

Philippines Passport data got lost with the change of passport maker.

The Philippine Star today reported that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is requiring some of those renewing their Philippines Passport to bring their birth certificates as its previous outsourced passport maker “took away” all its applicants’ data,

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said:

“We are rebuilding our files from scratch because previous outsourced passport maker took all the data when contract (was) terminated.”

“Because previous contractor got pissed when terminated it made off with data. We did nothing about it or couldn’t because we were in the wrong. It won’t happen again. Passports pose national security issues and cannot be kept back by private entities. Data belongs to the state,” he said in another post.

All Philippines Passports are touched by this problem except the e-Passport

Applicants renewing brown or green passports or maroon machine-readable passports are required to submit birth certificate. Owners of a recent e-Passport are exempt of this requirement because all data is stored in the inbuilt memory chip.

Questions arise

All the filled in data of the form below now are in the hands of an unauthorised person. What will happen?

• Why did the Philippines Government give all this private and sensitive data in private hands?
• What is the Philippines Government doing to get the stolen data back?
• Is the National Bureau of Investigation tracking the company and the employees involved in this scandal?
• Who pays if material and immaterial losses result of this data theft?
• Answers may be given on Twitter!
• Since his appointment as DFA secretary in October last year, Teodoro Locsin Jr., a former journalist and lawmaker, has been using Twitter to address the concerns of the public.
• Check him on Twitter: @teddyboylocsin ‏