This isn’t an international general politics and news show, and so I hadn’t covered Afghanistan. That said, the Intercept is reporting on the loss of US Military Biometrics devices. Quoting the piece.
The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official and three former U.S. military personnel, all of whom worried that sensitive data they contain could be used by the Taliban. HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases. It’s unclear how much of the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised.
This is an example of not thinking about what happens with data when something goes wrong. Clearly a security measure, used to track identity, one can understand how the decisions were made to use the technology to check identity.
And what wasn’t considered was what would happen if things went wrong.
Trying this into the previous story as the example, the opportunity here for providers is to ensure that downsides are considered.