This week an email was sent to people in Afghanistan. It told the recipients, who had all worked for British forces in Afghanistan, that some of their personal data “may have been compromised”. All had applied for asylum in the UK, fearful because their work for Britain made them a target for the Taliban. Now they were told their asylum applications had been leaked into the public domain.
They were advised not to take phone calls or respond to messages or emails from unknown contacts, to limit access to their social media, to consider closing their accounts, and to only go online via a private connection. Understandably, they were terrified.
Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor, tells Helen Pidd how 24 hours later, John Healey, the defence secretary, apologised for probably the biggest – and most expensive — data leak in British government history. And the former Afghan judge Marzia Babakarkhail tells Helen about how Afghans fear the data list could could endanger their lives.