The United States created a biometric system to register as many Afghans as doable over 15 years in the past, and it is change into a trigger for concern now that the Taliban has taken over. According to NBC News, privateness advocates are worried [PDF] about the potential of the Taliban utilizing the database to determine and goal people who labored with the US-backed Afghan authorities and organizations that champion ladies’s rights. The system’s database, which the US shared with the Afghan authorities, reportedly incorporates tens of millions of fingerprints, iris scans and face images collected all through the years.

While the precise variety of people within the database is unclear, an Air Force medic the publication talked to mentioned he was instructed to scan the irises, take the fingerprints and {photograph} the face of each Afghan who got here by means of the hospital doorways whereas he was in service. Other navy officers needed to the identical factor. The purpose was to have an intensive database of fingerprints that authorities can search within the occasion a bomb is discovered.

That mentioned, for the reason that US navy scanned anybody and everybody, one of many vets who helped gather Afghans’ biometrics mentioned it may very well be tough to make use of the database to search out particular people to focus on. Someone being within the database does not essentially imply they labored with the US authorities or ladies’s rights organizations. Department of Defense spokesperson Eric Pahon additionally denied that Afghans’ biometric knowledge is in danger. He advised NBC News that “The U.S. has taken prudent actions to ensure that sensitive data does not fall into the Taliban’s hands. This data is not at risk of misuse,”