An Australian Official Accidentally Released Obama's Personal Details In An Email

White House investigates privacy breach after passport information of G20 leaders was mistakenly emailed to the organiser of a soccer tournament.

You know that terrible, sinking feeling you get when you've hit send on an email and realise it has gone to the wrong person?

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But instead of sending an email about how crazy your ex is to your crazy ex, imagine sending the personal details of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel, Xi Jinping and other G20 leaders to someone you weren't supposed to.

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Pictured: World's most powerful people waving goodbye to their personal information.

As reported by The Guardian, that's exactly what happened to a staff member at the Australian Department of Immigration last November during the G20/koala cuddling summit in Brisbane.

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In an email obtained under freedom of information laws, the staff member accidentally put the “name, date of birth, title, position, nationality, passport number, visa grant number and visa subclass held relating to 31 international leaders (i.e. prime ministers, presidents and their equivalents) attending the G20 leaders summit.”

How did this happen? The person didn't check the autofill function in the 'To' field in Outlook, and the highly sensitive email went to one of the people organising the Asian Cup soccer tournament.

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But instead of coming clean, the immigration department just asked the recipient to delete the email and then decided not to tell anyone about it.

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The Guardian reports that decision could have been in breach of privacy laws in Britain, Germany and France that require people to be informed if they have been affected by data breach. People like the president or prime minister, for example.

The accidental leak is pretty embarrassing for Australia's federal government, since they just passed laws to keep all of our metadata.

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Don't worry guys! Metadata koala has it alllll under control.

UPDATE: The ABC is reporting the White House is now looking into the matter.

"I have seen those reports. I can't confirm that at this time," White House press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters.

"I can tell you that we're looking into them and we'll take all appropriate steps necessary to ensure the privacy and security of the president's personal information."