The information is also of deep military value-whether for the Americans who helped construct it or for the Taliban, both of which are “looking for networks” of their opponent’s supporters, says Annie Jacobsen, a journalist and author of First Platoon: A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance.īut not all the data has such clear use. He calls it a sort of “genealogy” of “community connections” that is “putting all of these people at risk.” One of the forms for police recruitment alone captured 36 pieces of information, including data on applicants and their families that included details such as "favorite fruit” and “favorite vegetable.” This turns what was a simple digital catalogue into something far more dangerous, according to Ranjit Singh, a postdoctoral scholar at the nonprofit research group Data & Society who studies data infrastructures and public policy. That installs soldiers as occupying forces who endlessly gather data about local populations, as rights to privacy are suspended indefinitely.But it also contains details on the individuals’ military specialty and career trajectory, as well as sensitive relational data such as the names of their father, uncles, and grandfathers, as well as the names of the two tribal elders per recruit who served as guarantors for their enlistment. The problem is that conflicts can devolve into protracted police-state missions. Leah West, a national-security professor at Carleton University who is researching the legalities of biometric technologies, said that militaries always try to gather data about local populations under their control, because soldiers need advantages that can end a war. Mitchell, who still works for Global Affairs Canada, said she has not been cleared to speak publicly on this issue.) “The risk may be particularly worrying in places experiencing sectarian or ethnic violence, such as Iraq or Afghanistan.” (Contacted this week by The Globe and Mail, Ms. The interception of modern biometric databases could aid forces in other conflicts with similar genocidal intent, she wrote. During the 1990s Rwandan genocide, feuding factions used national identity cards – which listed ethnic identity – to determine who to kill. She pointed out that a state’s data holdings can become powerful tools of repression amid anarchy. In 2012, Queen’s University lecturer and federal diplomat Alison Mitchell asked in an academic essay whether the Canadian Forces had thought deeply enough about the HIIDE scanners they were using in Afghanistan.Ī “serious risk associated with the creation of biometric databases is that the information contained in them may be misused or fall into wrong hands,” Ms. The potential for biometric backfires was predicted long ago. Later, the devices were also used to scan the features of police and soldiers, in bids to screen out rogue elements from Afghan security forces. Starting in the early 2000s, U.S.-led coalition soldiers used HIIDE devices and similar equipment to scan fingerprints and retinas of Afghans who had been identified as potential insurgents. Agency for International Development also said this week that they are deleting images of Afghans from the internet. “This is in line with some of our NATO partners.” “We are reviewing our public-facing websites and social-media platforms to ensure imagery does not pose a risk to Afghan Nationals who supported CAF operations,” Ms. The Canadian military is taking at least one step to protect the identities of Afghans: It is now removing their images from its older online publications. “We can’t provide details for operational and security reasons,” said Jessica Lamirande, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence. The Pentagon is not commenting on the reported seizures, nor is the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), which ended a 12-year mission in Afghanistan in 2014. It’s not clear how much data Taliban security forces could manage to scrape off of these systems. An employee scans the eyes of a woman for biometric data needed to apply for a passport, at the passport office in Kabul, Afghanistan, on June 30, 2021.
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