A report published on the Manila Times in 2015 described the possible circumstances surrounding awarding of what turned out to be a disastrous contract to print Philippine passports. Interestingly enough, the issue was brought to the fore by a Yellowtard politician…
Akbayan party-list Rep. Ibarra Gutierrez was referring to the awarding by the DFA of the contract to the APO Production Unit Inc., a government-controlled corporation under the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).
Gutierrez said he is puzzled as to why the DFA awarded the printing contract to APO considering that Philippine passports have long been produced ed at the security printing plant of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in Quezon City which is technically equipped to handle the printing of bank notes, documents and forms that need security features.
The fiasco has exposed millions of Filipino passport holders to potential breaches to their privacy.
Nonetheless, DFA Secretary Teddy Locsin Jr assures everyone that all is ok as, like most things, data has a use-by date after which quality degenerates…
As time passes the shit dries up so you can examine it with a stick without any of it sticking to the stick. No leak so far. But the data is possibly hopelessly corrupted and at any rate inaccessible now or we are being lied to as usual.
There you go. We can all rest assured of this.