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RobotMonster writes:
"The Guardian reports that a vast database containing the full names, nationalities, location, arrival date, and boat arrival information for a third of all asylum seekers held in Australia -- almost 10,000 adults and children -- had been inadvertently released by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in one of the most serious privacy breaches in Australia's history.
The disclosure of the database is a major embarrassment for the federal government, which has adopted a policy of extreme secrecy on asylum-seeker issues. As the department is likely to have breached Australia's privacy laws, it will be interesting to see what the repercussions are for the people who should be held responsible."
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Australia's Asylum-Seeker Database Leaked
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by glyph on Friday February 21 2014, @11:08PM
It doesn't sound anywhere near that simple. It's not a case of the wrong file in the wrong place, or lax database security. Apparently, the data was embedded in documents that are supposed to be public.
People will have downloaded these documents without knowing the refugee data is included. The reports are coy about how the data was embedded, but apparently you do need specialised software to access it. Either way, embedding secret data in public documents doesn't sound like a normal slip up.