Filipinos renewing their pre-2010 passports must now present their birth certificates as an extra requirement because the contractor that produced passports “took all the data” when the government terminated its contract, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said last week.
Locsin disclosed the data loss last week on Twitter, after a user on the social media network asked him why he needed to present a birth certificate to renew his passport.
“Because previous contractor got pissed when terminated it made off with data,” Locsin replied in his post. “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.”
Locsin’s post suggested that the contractor that took the data, a reputable French company, was terminated because government officials at the time wanted to make kickbacks from a new deal.
“What I heard and there are so many stories in the affected department they sued us for wrongful termination. In fact it was the most respectable company, foreign, French even. So why? Kaching, Kaching, Kaching, Kaching.”
"And by the way, why was the previous contractor terminated? New technology? Then demand it to acquire the new technology but leave the job to it. Di ba? But that means no kickback. In short, people made money by changing contractor. Ano pa (What else)? S**t," he said.
While Locsin did not name the French company, news reports say Oberthur Technologies of France won the contract to produce e-passports in 2008. The DFA transferred the production of the passports to APO Production Unit, one of the three government-authorized printers in October 2015.
Jumping to conclusions, opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros wrongly pinned the blame for the data loss on the Duterte administration, ignoring the fact that the contract with the
French contractor was terminated during the term of President Benigno Aquino III, with whom she is allied.
She is correct, however, in saying that the data must be retrieved “with the highest sense of urgency” and that the people responsible for such a gross display of incompetence should be held fully resonsible.
The loss of the data, after all, not only inconveniences the public, but represents a major violation of the privacy of the affected passport holders.
Locsin’s response so far has been inadequate.
“I just want it fixed and not repeated,” he tweeted. “Redundancy of data was promised by previous contractor but not fulfilled or just denied us. We have no knowledge whatsoever if it has been corrected. Like a cuckolded husband, we are always the last to know.”
Beyond tweeting similes, Locsin’s job as DFA chief is not only to fix the problem, but to unravel the passport mess: Find out precisely how it came about and who were responsible for it—so we will never again be the last to know.
