One report suggested that the Taliban may not be able to access the biometric data collected through HIIDE because they lack the technical capacity to do so. We do not yet know the extent to which the Taliban have been able to commandeer the biometric data once held by the US military. Photo”: Rahmat Gul / AP via The Conversation Before falling to the Taliban, the Afghan government made extensive use of biometric security, including scanning the irises of people like this woman who applied for passports. The Afghan ID, the e-Tazkira, is an electronic identification document that includes biometric data, which increases the privacy risks posed by Taliban access to the National ID system. In addition, the Afghan National ID system and voter registration databases contained sensitive data, including ethnicity data. These included evidence for criminal prosecution, clearing Afghan workers for employment and election security. and Afghan military for security purposes, the Department of Defense and the Afghan government eventually adopted the technologies for a range of day-to-day governmental uses. In addition to the use of biometric data by the U.S. It is unclear how close the military came to this goal. Over the years, to support these military objectives, the Department of Defense aimed to create a biometric database on 80% of the Afghan population, approximately 32 million people at today’s population level. That device was replaced by the Identity Dominance System-Marine Corps in 2017, which uses a laptop with biometric data-collection sensors, known as the Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit. In 2013, the US Army and Marine Corps used the Biometric Enrollment and Screening Device, which enrolled the iris scans, fingerprints and digital face photos of “persons of interest” in Afghanistan. Intelligence analysts can also use the system to monitor people’s movements and activities by tracking biometric data recorded by troops in the field.īy 2011, a decade after 9/11, the Department of Defense maintained approximately 4.8 million biometric records of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with about 630,000 of the records collected using HIIDE devices.Īlso by that time, the US Army and its military partners in the Afghan government were using biometric-enabled intelligence or biometric cyberintelligence on the battlefield to identify and track insurgents. In addition to biometric data, the system includes biographic and contextual data such as criminal and terrorist watchlist records, enabling users to determine if an individual is flagged in the system as a suspect. Users of these devices can collect iris and fingerprint scans and facial photos, and match them to entries in military databases and biometric watchlists. HIIDE is a single small device that incorporates a fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. forces were collecting biometric data primarily through mobile devices such as the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE).īAT includes a laptop, fingerprint reader, iris scanner and camera. Identity dominance means being able to keep track of people the military considers a potential threat regardless of aliases, and ultimately denying organizations the ability to use anonymity to hide their activities.īy 2004, thousands of US military personnel had been trained to collect biometric data to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen documented the birth of biometric-driven warfare in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in her book “ First Platoon.” The US Department of Defense quickly viewed biometric data and what it called “identity dominance” as the cornerstone of multiple counterterrorism and counterinsurgency strategies. My research and the work of journalists and privacy advocates who study biometric cyber-surveillance anticipated these data privacy and security risks. This data breach underscores that data protection in zones of conflict, especially biometric data and databases that connect online activity to physical locations, can be a matter of life and death.
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