The biometric, social and business data the Taliban could use to target left-behind Afghans
Concerns are mounting that the Taliban has gained access to vast amounts of personal information through former US military and Afghan government databases that could allow them to target civilians.
It would be the first time the group has acquired the personal information of Afghan civilians on such a scale.
Afghans are also racing to erase social media profiles, while international organisations scramble to delete any remaining evidence that could reveal information on the locals they have worked with over the past 20 years.
And with reports that documents identifying job applicants and Afghan workers were left outside the British embassy, the threat of identifying information falling into the wrong hands is more real than ever.
But what information could the Taliban access and what could it mean for Afghan civilians?
Fingerprint scanners, iris scanners and other biometric equipment was used to verify voters in 2019 elections
Biometric data
At least three digital identity systems using biometric data are known to have been operated recently in Afghanistan, according to digital human rights group Access Now.
One of them – the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) – was initially operated by US forces as a means of collecting iris, fingerprint and facial scans of criminals and insurgents during the war.
But it was later used to log the data of Afghans assisting the US among others, with investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen reporting that the Pentagon aimed to gather biometric data on 80% of the Afghan population.
Reports indicate that HIIDE equipment – and therefore the large centralised databases of personal information they are linked to – was seized by the Taliban last week.
It’s not known how many people’s sensitive, identifying information can now be retrieved by the group as a result.
The consequences could be fatal, with reports that Taliban fighters are going house to house to find people who worked with foreign forces.
But there are also less immediate implications which might stop people hiding from the Taliban from accessing services such as healthcare and further education, according to Brian Dooley of Human Rights First, a US-based human rights group.
“Will people want to go to hospital if they know that when they come into contact with the authorities, they will have access to biometric data and there’s no hiding who you are, and what your history was?” he told Sky News.
Human Rights First have produced guides on how to erase digital history and evade misuse of biometric data.
Two government-run biometric databases were also recently operational in Afghanistan: the controversial e-Tazkira identity cards and US-supported Afghanistan Automated Biometric Identity System.
“I think it’s probably wise to assume that the Taliban have got their hands on everything that the Afghan government had a couple of weeks ago, which was a lot of information on people,” said Mr Dooley.
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Afghan families in UK fear for relatives in Kabul
The 2019 Afghan election, for example, used voter verification machines with fingerprint, eye and facial recognition capabilities in a bid to curb election fraud.
Access Now also estimates that there may be several other digital identity systems using biometrics held by humanitarian organisations like the UN and World Food Programme.
Many of these international groups are now racing to do what they can to secure the data they have gathered.
Carolyn Tackett, deputy advocacy director at Access Now told Sky News:
“For humanitarian agencies like the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the World Food Program (WFP) that have embedded biometrics into their service delivery, they are now facing difficult decisions about how to minimise data records and access points that put people in danger, while also trying to maintain their programmes in support of millions in Afghanistan facing displacement, food insecurity, poverty, and more.”
And while Ms Tackett does not have evidence of international organisations’ databases being compromised, she said “time is of the essence” when it comes to securing data.
“It is standard form around the world for host governments to require access to [international organisations’] databases for purposes of migration, law enforcement, and more,” she said.
“And it is likely only a matter of time before the Taliban present them with the same ultimatum.”
Social media
Since 10 August, many Afghans have scrambled to eliminate traces of their previous lives on social media for fear of retribution by the Taliban.
This includes the thousands of people who either worked directly with foreign forces as interpreters or worked in adjacent organisations in the years since US forces entered the country.
Abdul worked as a contractor for a Western security firm. His name has been changed to protect his identity.
He told Sky News that on the first day the Taliban took over he deleted everything from his Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. He deleted his LinkedIn in the following days.
He’s concerned that his connection to a Western company may make him a target of the Taliban.
“I deleted everything belonging to my career – even my birthday wishes from expats, who were mostly UK citizens,” he said.
He told Sky News he felt “scared, shameful and disgraced” to have to do it.
“It was against the commitments I made to my friends,” he said.
It’s a feeling shared by many Afghans who have had to erase evidence of their accomplishments for fear of reprisals.
Fatimah Hossaini, a journalist and women’s activist, shared an image of herself and three other female Afghan colleagues deleting their digital history in the days following the Taliban’s capture of Kabul.
She posted: “The last days in Kabul while we, four friends, Afghan women journalists were hiding ourselves in d house. we were deleting our posts & profiles & whatever we achieved over past two decades. Taliban fighters were outside & patrolling d area. Feeling broken & traumatized.”
She has since fled the country.
But not everyone may want to – or be able to – erase their online identity.
“For some people, it’s a horrible dilemma. Their ticket out is to be able to prove that they have some relationship with American forces or British forces, for example. If they delete that, it might be more dangerous for them,” said Brian Dooley.
Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn have all rolled out tools to limit who can see Afghan users’ profiles and connections.
Information held by businesses
While information online can be erased at the click of a button, sensitive documents stored in offices throughout Afghanistan are far harder to destroy.
The speed the Taliban captured Kabul means many did not have time to eliminate evidence which – in the eyes of the Taliban – incriminates them.
Smoke rises next to the US Embassy in Kabul on 15 August as diplomatic vehicles leave the compound. Pic: AP
Abdul was in his office on the day that the group descended on Kabul.
But on hearing the news he left, terrified.
His personal profile on the office admin files were left behind, as well as the duty roster with employees’ names on them.
“Every moment I think about it and what happens to me if they find me. It’s hard to imagine how cruel they are,” he said.
It follows the discovery by a journalist of CVs and job applications strewn on the ground outside the British Embassy in Kabul, with names and identifying information clearly visible.
Others have raised concerns about the possibility of the Taliban accessing call logs and location records of individuals, which are stored by telecoms companies.
While the risk posed by this information falling into the wrong hands is serious, experts estimate that there is still some time for some organisations to stop the Taliban gaining access.
“They’ve got their hands full by imposing their authority on a country. I suspect that large-scale tech detection is not what they’re going to be doing on day four or five. But maybe week four or five,” said Mr Dooley.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
For days, the people of Paiporta have been dealing with the devastation of their town. But what hurts them now is the sense that they have been forgotten by their country.
As we walk through this town, what we see is relentless hard work – clearing mud, pumping out water, recovering cars.
But none of it is being done by people in uniform. Paiporta is being saved by its own residents, by friends, and by volunteers.
“The town feels like chaos,” says Cristina Hernandez, who moved here a year ago from Madrid
“Nobody has organised anything so we are doing our best. We feel we are abandoned by the government and there are also a lot of thieves in the night, so we are scared.
“It is a nightmare not only because of the floods but also because of the anarchy that we are living through now. After the catastrophe, the worst thing is that we are still scared.
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“We don’t have food or clothes. Some of our friends are still missing and some have lost their houses with all their things in them.
“So it is pretty sad that we see trucks going past but nobody is helping with the mud and clearing the houses, so we are alone.”
As if on cue, we can see a helicopter flying above us, but it passes by. She shakes her head.
Volunteers and residents clean up the mud four days after flash floods swept away everything in their path in Paiporta. Pic: AP/Angel Garcia
“We see them, but we don’t know what they are doing,” she says. It is, at the moment, a cruel sight – a tantalising vision of help that comes and goes.
Around us is a tapestry of devastation – dozens and dozens of wrecked cars, many of them lying in a lake of stagnant water. Cloying mud covers piles of debris. On the road, there is a child’s booster seat, a shoe and a small purse. Tangled wires lie like a web.
AP/Angel Garcia
Along the road, every house is affected, splattered with mud. You can see the dark waterline where the water reached its highest point.
Ruth is sweeping water along the street, time after time, pushing it towards an open manhole cover. She rests for a second, then starts again.
She takes a break and tells me that she has not seen a policeman, a soldier, a doctor or any other official. “It’s only us who clean up,” she says. “Where are they?”
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Aerial footage captures aftermath of floods
I start to ask her if she is angry with the government, and she interrupts. Her fury is palpable. “Angry? I am so, so angry with the government.
“I don’t care which political party you support, because my flag is Spain. And this is so bad.”
She wanders off, then returns and gently grabs my arm. “Come this way,” she says. “The world should see this.”
We round a corner and come to a street that is entirely packed with a wall of cars, mixed with huge piles of debris.
A fridge freezer, a microwave. Ruth clambers on top of a shattered bonnet and pulls me alongside her. “Nobody can reach these houses; nobody has looked in these cars,” she says. “They have forgotten.”
A man talks to a Guardia Civil officer in Paiporta. Pic: AP/Angel Garcia
It’s not true to say that no officials have come to Paiporta. We see local police, civil guard, ambulances and firefighters. As we’re leaving, we even see a military truck pull up.
But nobody seems to be coordinating any of this. At one point, I saw a policeman try to take control of a vehicle recovery, but nobody listened to him. He had a short row with his colleague, and then they both drove off.
As for the military, I had a chat with one of the officers as they stood by the road, waiting for a lorry to move so they could drive in.
The soldier was evidently frustrated. “We want to help, we know we can help, but so far we don’t have the orders about what we have to do,” he said.
“So you need a chief – someone to take control?” I asked. A question answered with a deep, long nod.
Paiporta has suffered grievously in these floods. At least 60 people are dead, a figure that shocked Cristina when I told her. They have no access to the internet, of course, and cannot leave their town. “There will be more,” was her response.
But what makes that pain so much worse is the time it is taking to be helped. Last year, I went with my colleagues to an appalling earthquake in Morocco, and within two days there were well-equipped Spanish response teams helping out, saving lives and leading the response.
And yet now, in their own country, the response is sluggish and indecisive.
A French offer to send in help was turned down. We are told that huge numbers of troops are being mobilised but we have seen hardly any and the ones we’ve met don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
These towns are desperate for leadership, reassurance, help and certainty. Instead, right now, they are fending for themselves.
World
Dmitry Medvedev warns US it should take Russia nuclear warnings seriously to avoid World War Three
Moscow has warned the US it should take Russia’s nuclear warnings seriously to avoid World War Three.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and who served as the country’s president from 2008 to 2012, warned the US on Saturday it was “wrong” to believe “that the Russians will never cross a certain line”.
He told Russian-state broadcaster RT that Moscow believed the current US and European political establishments lacked the “foresight and subtlety of mind” displayed by the late Henry Kissinger.
“If we are talking about the existence of our state, as the president of our country has repeatedly said, your humble
servant has said, others have said, of course, we simply will not have any choice,” Mr Medvedev said.
Russia has been signalling for weeks to the West that Moscow will respond if the US and its allies help Ukraine fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.
US diplomats have previously said Washington is not seeking to escalate the war in Ukraine.
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It’s not the first time Mr Medvedev has warned of a serious escalation of the Ukraine conflict.
Back in September, he threatened that Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian territory of Kursk had given Russia formal grounds to use nuclear weapons.
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It comes as Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv became the subject of an overnight aerial attack which lasted until midday today and saw one person injured, city officials said. All drones had been shot down.
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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has recently seen North Korean troops join the fight alongside Russia’s army, said strikes were also reported in the central Poltava and northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
“This year, we have faced the threat of ‘Shahed’ drones almost every night – sometimes in the morning, and even during
the day,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia.
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North Korean troops are near the Ukrainian border
Kyiv’s military said on Friday that Moscow’s forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets
across Ukraine in October alone.
Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.
World
Children among 25 people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza – as 41 killed in attack on northern Lebanon
An 18-month-old boy and his 10-year-old sister are among 25 people who were killed in a series of Israeli strikes on central parts of Gaza, hospital officials have said.
Sixteen people were initially reported to have been killed in two strikes on the central Nuseirat refugee camp on Thursday, but officials from the Al Aqsa hospital said bodies continued to be brought in.
The hospital said they had received 21 bodies from the strikes, including some transferred from the Awda hospital, where they had been taken the day before.
Strikes on a motorcycle in Zuwaida and on a house in Deir al Balah on Friday killed four more, hospital officials said, bringing the overall toll to 25.
Five children and seven women are among those who have been confirmed dead.
The mother of the 18-month-old boy is missing and his father was killed in an Israeli strike four months ago, the family has said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA earlier reported that 57 people had died in the Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strikes but said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza.
Palestinians watch as smoke rises following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. Pic: Reuters
It also said its forces had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area – home to one of the territory’s refugee camps.
It comes as the Israeli military said on Friday it killed senior Hamas official Izz al Din Kassab, describing him as one of the last high-ranking members, in an airstrike in Khan Younis.
A displaced Palestinian boy in Gaza City on 28 October. Pic: Reuters
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have over the past few weeks resumed intense operations in the north of Gaza, claiming they are seeking to stop Hamas, the militant group ruling Gaza, from regrouping.
Meanwhile, top UN officials said in a statement on Friday that the situation in northern Gaza is “apocalyptic” and the entire Palestinian population in the area is at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence”.
The overall number of people killed in Gaza in the 13-month war is more than 43,000, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported this week.
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Civil defence members work at a site damaged in the aftermath of Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs. Pic: Reuters
It comes as at least 41 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s Baalbek region on Friday, the regional governor said.
The deaths were confirmed hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said 30 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country in the past 24 hours.
It is not clear if any of those killed in the Baalbek region were included in that figure.
In recent days, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeast city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon, prompting roughly 60,000 people to flee their homes, according to Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese official representing the region.
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Israel has issued evacuation orders for people living in parts of Lebanon
Israel’s military said in a statement that attacks “in the area of Beirut” had targeted Hezbollah weapons manufacturing sites, command centres and other infrastructure.
Israeli planes also pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighbourhoods, according to the Lebanese state news agency.
More than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded since fighting between Israel and Hezbollah escalated after Hamas’s 7 October attack last year, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
Meanwhile, in northern Israel, seven people, including three Israelis and four Thai nationals, were killed by projectiles fired from Lebanon on Thursday, Israeli medics said.
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