Thousands Of Tourist Data Exposed By Jamaica’s Immigration Website
Travelers’ Documents and COVID-19 Lab results were exposed.
Hundreds of thousands of travelers’ immigration records and COVID-19 test results were discovered to have been left unprotected following a security lapse from the Jamaican government contractor that built the website.
According to a recent report by TechCrunch, the storage server that was hosted on Amazon Web Services was set to public. The cloud storage server storing those uploaded documents was left unprotected and without a password.
Exposed data included the traveler’s name, date of birth and passport numbers, and even the images of the travelers’ signatures.
It is unclear for how long the server has been left out in the open, but it stored more than 70,000 negative COVID-19 lab results, over 425,000 immigration documents authorizing travel to the island, and over 250,000 quarantine orders dating back to June 2020, when Jamaica reopened its borders to visitors after the pandemic’s first wave.
Many of the exposed information in the immigration server are from Americans.
The Jamaican government-contracted Amber Group to build the JamCOVID19 website and app, which the government uses to publish daily coronavirus figures and allows residents to self-report their symptoms.
The contractor also built the website to pre-approve travel applications to visit the island during the pandemic, a process that requires travelers to upload a negative COVID-19 test result before they board their flight if they come from high-risk countries, including the United States.
The data is now secure after TechCrunch contacted Amber Group’s chief executive.
Jamaica Should Repeal Gay Sex Ban
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has called for Jamaica to repeal its colonial-era gay sex ban.
IACHR, a top rights body of the Americas, has for the first time ruled that criminalizing gay and lesbian people violates international law.
In 2011, two Jamaicans initiated the case after being attacked by homophobic gangs and sought asylum overseas. The case argues that the 1864 ban in Jamaica on the “abominable crime of buggery” and “gross indecency” legitimized violence against LGBT+ people.
According to the report, Jamaica’s law violated the rights of Henry and Simone Edwards to “human treatment, equal protection before the law, privacy and freedom of movement.”
Jamaica is one of nine countries in the Caribbean that punishes gay intercourse. Homophobia is rampant in the country, and the penalty for same-sex intimacy is up to 10 years in jail with hard labor. Aside from Jamaica, gay sex is also illegal in 68 other countries.
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