The National Privacy Commission said Tuesday it would investigate the reported loss of passport data but Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. clarified that the government’s former contractor had not taken any records but merely made them inaccessible.
In a new Twitter post, Locsin said that contrary to what he said earlier, the former passport contractor, Oberthur Technologies, did not make off with the data when its contract was terminated in 2015.
“Data is not run-away-able but made inaccessible. Access denied,” Locsin said in his new Twitter post.
Locsin said that while the current passport contractor and printer APO Production Unit Inc., a national government printer, was able to access the data from Oberthur, these are “not much use and parts [were] corrupted.”
Locsin’s statement came after APO said on Monday that the equipment containing details of passport applicants are intact, accessible, and restored.
“All data have been retrieved when the equipment was turned over. It was all restored,” said Michael Dalumpines, chairman of APO Production Unit Inc. “We can access everything.”
“Our IT guys were able to do something about it. That’s why the data was restored,” he added.
Last week, Locsin said the French contractor ran off with the personal data because it was “pissed off” when its contract was terminated.
This meant that some holders of older passports who were renewing them would need to present their birth certificates so that the DFA could rebuild its database, he said at the time.
The Palace, however, has declared that this was an unnecessary burden on passport holders and said their old passports should be enough.
On Tuesday, Locsin seemed to agree, noting that APO agreed with him “that old passports are best evidence of identity.”
“Join me in despising those who don’t agree with me,” Locsin said.
The DFA issues 10,000 passports daily or three-million passports a year, but that huge demand balloons to 25,000 per day during the peak travel seasons.
READ: Palace: Spare public from passport mess
Despite Locsin’s clarification, NPC Commissioner Raymund Liboro said the agency has invited officers from the DFA to get to the bottom of the alleged loss of personal records.
“We need to gather more facts to ascertain if there was a personal data breach,” he said in Filipino.
Earlier, he had said there was no immediate proof of any data breach.
The Philippine National Police, meanwhile, said it considered the loss of passport data a threat to privacy and national security.
PNP chief Oscar Albayalde said the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group would be ready to help if its services are required.
The Palace on Tuesday said the President would not allow any data breach and said the DFA would do its job to secure the passport database.
He also pointed out that the most serious breach to date, at the Commission on Elections, had happened before Duterte took office.
Also on Monday, APO Production Unit denied reports that it had subcontracted the job of printing passports to the privately-owned United Graphic Expression Corp., which it described as its joint venture partner.
UGEC imports materials to be used by APO in the printing of passports but is not involved in the printing of the documents, said Michael Dalumpines, chairman of APO.
In an interview on GMA-7, Dalumpines said APO needed a joint venture partner because it had no capability to import printing materials.
Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. also said the former contractor had not run away with the data, as Locsin had earlier said.
It only failed to help resolve a system mismatch because the government and a new subcontractor were too embarrassed to ask for help, he said.
In an interview with radio dzMM, Yasay said under the Arroyo administration, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas was in charge of printing machine-readable passports that were compliant with standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
The succeeding Aquino administration, however, shifted to e-passports “for no compelling reason,” Yasay said.
APO, under the Presidential Communications Operations Office, won the contract for printing the new passports, but could not transfer the passport data to its own system because they used a different data format.
READ: Passport data loss: Locsin vows to unmask culprits, hits contractor