SYDNEY: An Australian watchdog on Wednesday ordered the government to pay damages to over a thousand asylum seekers whose personal data was wrongly made public seven years ago.

Lawyers believe this is the first time in Australian history that compensation has been ordered for a mass privacy breach. More than 9,000 migrants had their personal information — including their name, date of birth, citizenship, reason for detention and location they were being held — mistakenly published online in 2014.