US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Associated Press

US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression

By FRANK BAJAK
today

BOSTON (AP) — Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land.

But in the Taliban’s lightning seizure of power, most of that digital apparatus — including biometrics for verifying identities — apparently fell into Taliban hands. Built with few data-protection safeguards, it risks becoming the high-tech jackboots of a surveillance state. As the Taliban get their governing feet, there are worries it will be used for social control and to punish perceived foes.

Putting such data to work constructively — boosting education, empowering women, battling corruption — requires democratic stability, and these systems were not architected for the prospect of defeat.

“It is a terrible irony,” said Frank Pasquale, Brooklyn Law School scholar of surveillance technologies. “It’s a real object lesson in ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’”

{snip}

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-taliban-c007f85fb1b573c43a4391b947a5dcd4

[Lasher]

1. I guess they erased some of the data before the US pullout.

But not all of it.

[oldsoftie]

5. Think you're on the wrong post.

[keithbvadu2]

3. IBM and the Holocaust

IBM and the Holocaust

The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority.


How IBM Helped Automate the Nazi Death Machine in Poland Final Solutions. by Edwin Black. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, most of the world saw a ...

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ibm++helped+nazis

[rickyhall]

4. And the Bush family is connected to financing. And Bayer made the poison gas. Corporations.

[Steelrolled]

6. It is mind boggling that the information and systems were left (at least to some degree) intact.

We could use a lot of inquiries to find out how stuff like this happened. Our nation deserves to know.

[Marthe48]

7. In these times why not remote access?

--where the information can be erased in the comfort and safety of a secure room somewhere in the U.S.?

The U.S. has been accused of diddling computers in Iran, Russia and other places. Dark entities are sending ransomware to various computer systems. Please don't expect me to believe that our computer systems in Afghanistan couldn't also be accessed remotely to protect sensitive information.