a French contractor has seemingly taken the data for Philippine passports, apparently ‘pissed’ after losing contract. Hmmm I wonder if it is Gemalto, the French contractor who will be producing British passports? MANILA - Some Filipinos renewing their passports may have to present their birth certificates as an additional requirement after a passport production contractor the government had terminated "made off with data," Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has said. The Department of Foreign Affairs needs to "rebuild" its database for passports issued before 2010 because a "previous outsourced passport maker took all the data when contract terminated," Locsin said in a tweet on Jan. 9 https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/12/19/locsin-says-pissed-contractor-took-all-passport-data
that could only relate to expired and not renewed passports pre 2010 every one else will have a passport after that date as it was 5 years validity?
I still can't seem to grasp the fact that a foreign country will be producing British passports. Unbelievable... unless you take into account the fact that a French shipyard was also used to construct the Queen Mary 2. How low has British pride (and security) sunk ?
Using a private company to copy and process such highly personal information... especially a foreign one, is just ridiculous and stupid. IMHO. Now the Phils govt. have received their come-uppance, but at what cost to their citizens ?
In brief “The energy market is owned by the French government mainly, your railways are owned by the Dutch and German government and the Royal Mail's part-owned by the German government so they are state-owned, [it’s] just not Great Britain that owns them.” BBC Question Time audience member, 25 January 2018
A lot of our industry and infrastructure appears to have been taken away by, or given to hostile foreign powers. Something needs to change very soon.
That affects both of my kids as they have not renewed their Philippine passports and they were issued in 2008.
I don't understand this. Was the data stolen and the DFA's copy of the database destroyed by the French?
I think the implication is that the application and data resided on the French companies servers and they only had the UI in the Philippines.
It would be interesting to know the full story, does the passport data still exist or has it been wiped (accidentally or purposefully) by the DFA or by the French. How can there not be any historical backups?
Yeah I know, but it's not impossible, I once spent a very sweaty Good Friday trying to restore an Acrserve backup of an Oracle database and Netware server onto the server that held the Scottish budget financial planning system that the team I was part of had developed, it refused point blank to restore until finally I physically deleted the only working copy on the system then it finally let me restore the files. I had accidently run a DROP Table script and was staring the end of my career in the face We had good procedures in place this was 26 years ago and luckily I got it back but there are plenty of big institutions that don't to this day. We recently had two customers lose their entire server and they had no backup strategy in place, this was two large manufacturing plants, it beggared belief but it happened (our customers are responsible for their own systems infrastructure we only support our software).
I find it slightly hard to believe that a foreign contractor with a role in the passport chain would go rogue and 'steal data' after losing a contract. If this was a reputable company, they might complain in the strongest terms and take legal action if the Philippines has acted unfairly (heaven forbid). However, their credibility would be shot to pieces if they tendered for other contracts in France or around the world. Unless it was some fly be night outfit headed by a guy who befriended Locsin in a bar. Or, most likely, DFA has managed to lose the database with birth certificate information all by themselves and are trying to save face and blame an unnamed French company instead.
At the last Private bank I worked for, as well as a fully planned backup strategy there was real time encrypted offsite date mirroring to a secure "site" a few miles down the road, available and ready to go with just a couple of hours notice. If a missile struck the bank, the staff could supposedly just hop on a bus, travel to the standby office, log into the mirrored banking system, and start taking client phone calls as if nothing had happened. Or so they said...
I think that is exactly what has happened. They probably didn't outsource the printing of Passports either.
Is this the same French outfit that's gonna be responsible for UK passports? I've no doubt all the Filipino data is secure, sitting on a server in le France.
More from Locsin regarding passports:- MANILA, Philippines — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin has removed the birth certificate requirement for renewal of passport. In a Twitter post, Locsin shared a photo of Department Order (DO) 03-2019, which he dubbed as the “emancipation proclamation from bureaucratic crap.” Voila! The emancipation proclamation from bureaucratic crap. pic.twitter.com/kyven04l9h https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/...rtificate-requirement-for-renewal-of-passport or the more deadlier version https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/217931/locsin-i-will-kill-anyone-who-asks-for-a-birth-certificate