This is the true story of the biometric databases in Afghanistan abandoned by the Taliban

According to Jacobs ’book, AABIS aimed to cover 80% of Afghanistan’s population by 2012, which is approximately 25 million people. Although this database now has many records and no publicly available information, neither the contractor who manages the database nor the U.S. Department of Defense officials responded to requests for unconfirmed U.S.-based LinkedIn profile data. the program manager has 8.1 million records.

AABIS was used in many ways by the previous government in Afghanistan. Duties for government jobs and most projects required a biometric verification of the MoI system to ensure that applicants had no criminal or terrorist history. Passport, national identity card and driver’s license applications were also required for biological checks, as well as registration for the country’s university entrance exam.

Another database, slightly smaller than AABIS, was connected to the “e-card” with the country’s electronic ID. By the time the government collapsed, it had approximately 6.2 million applications in the process, according to National Statistics and Information Authority, but it is not clear how many applicants already submitted biometric data.

Biometrics was also used — or at least advertised — by other government departments. The Independent Electoral Commission used biometric scanners to prevent voter fraud in the 2019 parliamentary elections. with questionable results. 2020, Ministry of Industry and Trade he announced that they would gather biometrics of those who were registering new businesses.

Despite the numerous systems, they were never fully connected to each other. An Audit August 2019 The U.S. found that despite spending $ 38 million so far, APPS did not meet many of its goals: biometrics was not yet directly integrated into its staff files, but was linked to a single biometric number. Also, the system was not directly connected to other computer systems of the Afghan government, such as the Ministry of Finance, which sent salaries. The audit said the APPS was still based on manual data entry processes, which allowed for human errors or manipulations.

Global problem

Afghanistan is not the only country that has adopted biometrics. Many countries are concerned about so-called “beneficiary ghosts” – false identities used to illegally collect salaries or other funds. Preventing such fraud is a common justification for biometric systems, says Amba Kak, director of global policy and programs at AI Now Institute and a legal expert in biometric systems.

“It’s very easy to paint this [APPS] it’s extraordinary, ”says Kak, who co-edited a book on global biometric policy. He seems to have “a great deal of follow-up with global experiences” around biometrics.

It is well known that having legal identification documents is a right, but he says that “biometric identification is the only way to interfere with legal identification”, which is “flawed and a bit dangerous.”

Kak questions whether biometrics — rather than resolving policies — is the right solution to fraud, adding that it is often “not based on evidence.”

But largely driven by U.S. military targets and international funding, Afghanistan has seen an aggressive spread of such technologies. Although the APPS and other databases have not yet achieved the level of function they wanted to achieve, they do contain a terabyte of data on Afghan citizens that the Taliban can extract.

“Dominance of identity” – but who?

The alarm of biometric devices and databases left behind is growing A stream of other data on ordinary life in Afghanistan, has not stopped the collection of sensitive data from the people in the two weeks since the Taliban entered Kabul and the US forces officially withdrew.

This time, the data is mostly collected by well-meaning volunteers unsafe Google forms and spreadsheets, emphasizing that data security lessons have not yet been learned, or that all groups involved need to re-learn them.

Singh says more attention needs to be paid to the problem of what happens to data in conflict or government collapse. “We don’t take it seriously,” he says, “but we should do it, especially in those war-torn areas, to wreak havoc on information.”

Kak, a biometrics law researcher, suggested that the best way to protect sensitive data may be of this type. [data] infrastructure … they weren’t built in the first place. “

Jacobsen, the author and journalist, finds it ironic that the Department of Defense’s obsession with using data to establish identity has led the Taliban to get its own version of identity dominance. “That would be a fear of what the Taliban are doing,” he says.

Finally, some experts say that not being very interactive with Afghan government databases can be a real saving grace if the Taliban tries to use the data. “I suspect the APPS isn’t working that well yet, and that’s probably a good thing considering the recent events,” Dan Grazier, a veteran who works on the Government oversight project in the watchdog group, said in an email.

But for those connected to the APPS database, who can now find themselves hunted by the Taliban or their relatives, there is less irony and more betrayal.

“The Afghan army had confidence in its international partners, including the US-led, to build such a system,” says one person familiar with the system. “And now that database will be used [new] government weapon “.