A comprehensive inquiry is underway, scrutinizing the UK intelligence community's response to the data breach that endangered many lives and raised significant accountability questions.
**Inquiry Launched into Major Data Breach Affecting Afghan Collaborators**
**Inquiry Launched into Major Data Breach Affecting Afghan Collaborators**
Parliament's Intelligence Committee investigates a serious data leak that exposed thousands.
Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has initiated an inquiry into a considerable data breach that has compromised the identities of thousands of Afghans and British military officials. The breach, involving a spreadsheet that contained over 30,000 resettlement applications, emerged from the UK Special Forces headquarters in London when an employee mistakenly emailed the information to an external recipient in February 2022. The ISC's inquiry into this serious incident has been prompted by revelations that the data leak went unnoticed for over a year, with the breach identified in August 2023 when a man in Afghanistan publicly identified some individuals in a Facebook post, suggesting a potential blackmail situation that risked exposing many collaborators to Taliban reprisals.
The ISC, led by Chairman Lord Beamish, has called for immediate access to all intelligence documents pertaining to the breach. This comes after a super-injunction limited disclosure of the incident until recently. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has endorsed the ISC's scrutiny and stressed the necessity for accountability regarding the prior government's management of the case. The MoD has also stated it recognizes the need to understand how such significant lapses occurred.
The leak led to the establishment of the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR), aimed at relocating approximately 7,000 Afghans to the UK, with anticipated costs reaching £850 million. Additionally, the MoD has indicated that while it will robustly defend any potential legal actions or compensation claims, it will not proactively offer monetary reparations to those affected. The fallout from the data breach continues to raise critical questions about the protections afforded to individuals who aided British forces during the Afghanistan conflict, as the ISC endeavors to uncover the intelligence community's handling of the situation.
