As the Taliban moved in on the Afghan capital of Kabul with unexpected speed earlier this year, foreign aid workers, diplomats, and military personnel attempted to destroy reams of sensitive data that they’d collected over the decades-long U.S. occupation. The information included photos of smiling Afghans shaking hands with U.S. colleagues and vast stores of biometric data, which could be used to precisely identify individuals. Highly detailed biometric databases built with U.S. funding and assistance had been used to pay police and military and, in the hands of the Taliban, threatened to become a potent weapon. Afghans who’d worked with foreign governments rushed to scrub their digital identities and hide evidence of their online actions, afraid of the Taliban using cheerful social media posts against them.
The crucial need to secure the location data of vulnerable populations (brookings.edu)
