Locsin ”no leak so far” of passport holders’ personal data

January 14, 2019

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr said in his Twitter account on Monday there is "no leak so far" of the data allegedly stolen by the former private contractor to produce  passports. 

  Locsin  added that the data "is possibly hopelessly corrupted and at any rate inaccessible now or we ate being lied to as usual."

  The French firm Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciare, which former DFA Secretary Perfecto Yasay said in a Facebook post on Sunday, was tapped to produce passports as part of requirements of the Civil International Aviation.

  According to Locsin, the firm deposited the data at a warehouse in Lipa, Batangas. 

  "Possibly there was really no breach but Oberthur out of irritation deposited the data in a warehouse in Lipa and refused to give the access code so now it may be "corrupted" meaning inaccessible although the data—such as it is—is under APO. DFA has no direct access, DFA told me," he said in a separate tweet.

Meanwhile, the executive of a government printer said there is no breach of data of Philippine passport holders.

"All data have been retrieved when the equipment was turned over. It was all restored," Michael Dalumpines, chairman of APO Production Unit, Inc., printer of Philippine electronic passports, told a group of reporters in an interview. "We can access everything."

"Our IT guys were able to do something about it that's why the data was restored," Dalumpines said. Cristina Eloisa Baclig/DMS