Passport numbers, dates of birth and visa details of the President of the United States of America together with those of some 30 other world leaders who attended the G20 summit including Russian president Vladmir Putin and German chancellor Angela Merkel were carelessly emailed out by a case officer at Australia’s department off immigration late last year.

The error has made international news with the likes of the Washington Post, CNBC, New York Times etc reporting the mistake and announcing that the White House is investigating the issue and looking into taking “all appropriate steps necessary to ensure the privacy and security of the president’s personal information."

The embarrassing error was a result of a mindless moment of a case officer who simply failed to check the autofill function to ensure the email had the correct recipient’s email address. The sensitive email was sent to an organiser of the Asian Cup Soccer tournament who for a moment would probably have been impressed with the high level interest in the tournament.

DIBP has brushed off the incident as an “isolated example of human error” and it considered the risks of the breach to be “very low”, according to a report in the ABC. An email to the privacy commissioner said then immigration minister Scott Morrison was notified but the department did not consider it necessary to notify the leaders involved.

It remains unknown what measures the department has put in place to prevent such errors in future.

Commenting on the error that is still circulating on international news websites, Migration Alliance’s Liana Allan said, “DIBP should get it’s house in order before trying to regulate the higher qualified persons in the mansion next door.”

In the US earlier this year at least 4 civil servants were fired for snooping into the presidents passport information.

There has been no indiction that the DIBP has issued any apology to these 31 foreign dignitaries.