📋 Tender Overview
The Taliban control systems holding sensitive biometric data that Western donor governments left behind in Afghanistan in August 2021 putting thousands of Afghans at risk Human Rights Watch said today.These digital identity and payroll systems contain Afghans personal and biometric data including iris scans fingerprints photographs occupation home addresses and names of relatives. The Taliban could use them to target perceived opponents and Human Rights Watch research suggests that they may have already used the data in some cases.Governments and organizations that helped amass vast quantities of personal data on large numbers of Afghans may be inadvertently assisting the Taliban repression said Belkis Wille senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. Data collections highly intrusive nature and inadequate protections could put people at heightened risk of Taliban abuse.Foreign governments such as the United States and international institutions including United Nations agencies and the World Bank funded and in some cases built or helped to build vast systems to hold the biometric and other personal data of various groups of Afghans for official purposes. In some cases these systems were built for the former Afghan government. In others they were designed for foreign governments and militaries.Afghanistan currently has no data protection law. Having such a law even assuming it met international standards would not have guaranteed adequate data protection but it could have helped to ensure better practices and to reduce the potential harm to those whose data has fallen into Taliban hands.Human Rights Watch interviewed 12 Afghans with expert knowledge of the countrys biometric systems including 6 judges 5 foreign privacy and human rights researchers documenting the potential impacts of the systems being accessed by the Taliban 3 UN staff members working on Afghanistan and 2 US military officers formerly based in Afghanistan.A former military commander still in Afghanistan said that Taliban detained him for 12 days in November and took his fingerprints and scanned his irises with a data-collection tool. They told me they took my fingerprints to check if I was military and if they could confirm it they would kill me he said. I was very lucky that for some reason they did not get a match.Human Rights Watch examined six systems built by private companies for or with the assistance of foreign governments and international institutionsAfghan National Biometric System used to issue Afghan national identity cards known as e-TazkiraUS Defense Department Automated Biometric Identification System ABIS used to identify people whom the US believed might pose a security risk as well as those working for the US governmentAfghan Automated Biometric Identification System AABIS used to identify criminals and Afghan army and police membersMinistry of Interior and Defense Afghan Personnel and Pay Systems APPS for the army and police into which the AABIS was integrated in early 2021Payroll system of the National Directorate of Security the former state intelligence agency andPayroll system of the Afghan Supreme Court.In late 2021 several privacy rights organizations and media outlets raised their concerns about the Taliban gaining access to some of these systems particularly the APPS and ABIS systems. Concerns about Taliban access to the other systems has received little coverage. However information that a former government adviser shared with Human Rights Watch suggests that the Taliban may not have access to APPS.The Talibans access to this data comes at a time when they are targeting individuals because of their past association with the former government particularly members of the security forces judges and prosecutors and civil servants including women working in these fields. The Taliban have also detained and abused people who have criticized their policies. Human Rights Watch in November documented the Talibans killing or enforced disappearance of 47 former members of the Afghan National Security Forces ANSF military personnel police intelligence service members and militia between August 15 and October 31 with the UN reporting credible allegations of the killing of at least 130 security forces members or their relatives.The Taliban have targeted journalists and threatened human rights activists including womens rights activists women working in roles the Taliban believes are unsuitable for them and people who are lesbian gay bisexual and transgender LGBT.Since the Taliban takeover on August 15 many people who believe themselves to be at risk have been in hiding and moving frequently. Taliban access to these systems may make it much harder or impossible for these people to remain hidden. The Taliban have also taken steps to block people from fleeing the country.The Taliban have previously used biometric data to target people. In 2016 and 2017 journalists reported that Taliban fighters were using biometric scanners to identify and summarily execute bus passengers whom they determined were security force members all the Afghans interviewed mentioned those incidents.Aziz Rafiee executive director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum who is familiar with many of the systems and the risks posed said The international community might have thought it was helping us but instead it played with our fate and ended up creating systems more dangerous than they were helpful.
