Optus silent on Anthony Albanese’s demand that the telco pay for replacing passports

Anthony Albanese has revealed the company has yet to respond to a key demand after its data hack, as the Australian Electoral Commission weighed in.

Embattled telco Optus has not responded to a request to foot the bill for replacing millions of Australians’ passports in the wake of its data breach.

Anthony Albanese, who met with Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin on Saturday, revealed the company has yet to respond to the government’s demand.

“The taxpayers shouldn’t pay for this. Our view is very clear. We’ll continue to pursue that view,” the Prime Minister told 5AA radio.

“We await Optus to respond to our very clear, written request to them.”

Almost 10 million Australians were impacted in the hack, with personal details ranging from their full name and address to their passport, drivers licence and Medicare numbers accessed by the hackers.

The federal government will urgently update data privacy laws in the wake of the Optus breach. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Initially, Optus failed to notify customers of the Medicare data breach, later revealing 37,000 Medicare details had been hacked with 15,000 of those still active numbers.

The federal government have announced they will bring data and privacy laws “up to date” to protect Australians in the wake of the “messy” Optus breach.

Some individual states have indicated that those impacted will be eligible for a new licence, free of charge.

Meanwhile the Australian Electoral Commission announced that customers caught up in the Optus data breach who replace their passport or drivers licence will not need to update their electoral enrolment.

“We know that electoral enrolment won’t be front of mind for somebody affected by a data breach, and for the vast majority of voters it won’t have to be at all,” commissioner Tom Rogers said in a statement.

“The AEC regularly receives licence and passport information from our partners in federal, state and territory governments, which means a change to your licence or passport number will not affect your enrolment.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus have said updating the laws needed to be a matter of priority. Picture: Martin Ollman

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said Optus’ response had been a “mess”, and the government was using the power of hindsight to make sure nothing like this could happen again.

“We need everybody who has Australians’ data to take care of it,” he told Channel 7.

“We need to make sure that when there is a hack or a data breach, that they immediately notify people who have been affected, and notify financial institutions and banks and government, so we can take action to keep people safe from the effects of the hack.

“The laws haven’t kept pace. We will make sure our laws are brought up to date and work to protect Australians.”

Questions have swirled as to why the data of customers, as well as former customers, was being kept by Optus for so many years.

Mr Dreyfus said while companies may indeed need formal kinds of identification in order to provide a service, there needed to be greater restrictions around how long that data should stay in the system.

“We need to think about – do these companies need to keep this data? And if they need to keep it, they’ve got to keep it safe. That’s what has happened here, it wasn’t safe,” he said.

Almost 10 million Australians have been caught up in the breach. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Mr Albanese told parliament on Wednesday that the laws needed to be overhauled.

“Clearly, we need better national laws after a decade of inaction to manage the immense amount of data collected by companies about Australians, and clear consequences for when they do manage (it),” he said.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong asked for confirmation from Optus’ chief executive that the company would cover the costs of new passports.

A replacement passport costs $193.

“There is no justification for these Australians – or for taxpayers more broadly on their behalf – to bear the cost of obtaining a new passport,” she wrote in a letter.

The federal government is also looking into providing some Australians with replacement Medicare numbers, with Health Minister Mark Butler saying the government was “furious” the telco had taken five days to alert it to the issue.

“We were not notified that among passport details, drivers licence details and others that Medicare details had also been the subject of this breach,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.

“So we’re very concerned obviously about the loss of this data, and we’re working very hard to deal with the consequences of that.”

Mr Albanese said the government expected Optus “to do everything within its means to support affected customers”.

Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil has also flagged increasing fines for companies who fail to protect Australians’ data.

Maurice Blackburn have joined Slater and Gordon, saying they are looking into the possibility of a compensation claim on behalf of Optus customers.

Tens of thousands of disgruntled customers have already registered their interest.

If you are an Optus customer, the website Have I Been Pwned is a good resource to discover if your email address or phone number have been caught up in any data breaches.

For more information on how to protect yourself, visit the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner website.

Check the Optus website for information and contact Optus via the My Optus App or call 133 937.

Originally published as Optus silent on Anthony Albanese’s demand that the telco pay for replacing passports