Thousands of Afghans struggle to ensure their family’s physical safety after the Taliban took control of the country having additional concerns: that their own biometric database and digital history can be used to track and target it.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned of the “cold” field of human rights and violations of women and girls, and Amnesty International on Monday said thousands of Afghans – including academics, journalists and activists – “at the risk of serious Taliban retaliation” .
After years of encouragement to digitize a database in this country, and introduce a digital identity card and biometric for voting, activists warn this technology can be used to target and attack vulnerable groups.
“We understand that the Taliban now tend to have access to various databases and biometric equipment in Afghanistan,” wrote a human rights group that wrote on Twitter on Monday.
“This technology tends to include access to databases with fingerprints and scanning iris, and includes facial recognition technology,” added the group.
The US-based advocacy group quickly published the Farsi language version of his guide on how to delete digital history – which was produced last year for activists in Hong Kong – and also gathered manually on how to avoid biometric.
Tips for bypass facial recognition including looking down, wearing things to obscure facial features, or apply a lot of makeup layers, the guide says, even though fingerprints and slices Swass are difficult to cut.
“With data, it is far more difficult to hide, obscure your identity and your family, and data can also be used to perfect your contacts and networks,” Welton Chang said, head of technology in human rights first.
It can also be used “to create a new class structure – Job applicants will have their bio-data compared to the database, and work can be rejected on the basis of having a connection to a former government or security force,” he added.
“Terrible situation” will use data to target anyone involved in the previous government, or work in international non-profit, or is a Human Rights defender, he told Thomson Reuters foundation.
The door to Dooreven five years ago, the Taliban used the government biometric system to target members of security forces, examine their fingerprints against the database, according to local media reports.
On Monday, just hours after militants rolled over to the capital of Kabul, there was a concern that this had happened.
“Taliban started a door-to-door search” for government officials, a former member of the security forces and those who work for foreign non-profit, Twitter users named Mustafa said on Monday, adding that the journalist house was also sought.
A resident Kabul said in a private message that he had heard of home-to-home inspections, and that Islamic militants used “biometric machines”.
Taliban, in a statement, said it “convinced all of its citizens that it would, as usual, protect their life, property and honor and create a peaceful and safe environment for my beloved nation.” But the digital rights group has received “significant amount” requests from civil society groups and activists to secure their digital presence, Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Pacific Asia Policy Director in Access now.
“We are also very worried about databases maintained by institutions and other groups, and are worried that there is no clarity whether mitigation measures are taken to delete or clean information that can be used to target people,” he said.
Digital Identity Card, Tazkira, can expose certain ethnic groups, while even telecommunications companies have a “wealth of data” that can be used to track and target people, he added.
The responsibility for securing the data system in the end is that the Afghan government, Chang said, even though US forces and allies may have a role in “designing the system in the first place and helping with implementation.” “The possibility is not enough intentional planning done at the beginning of creation, maintaining and playing the system in terms of risk assessment and prevention of abuse,” he added.
Meanwhile, Afghans do what they can to rub their digital profiles.
Boys and men “panicked by telephone to remove the messages they have sent, the music they have listened to & the pictures they have taken,” BBC wrote the reporter there Safi wrote on Twitter on Sunday.