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A confidential source has disclosed a parliamentary probe that the UK abandoned classified technology permitting the Taliban to locate Afghans who collaborated with international military.

Data Breach Puts Thousands in Danger

Person A, called Person A, testified that people concerned by the data leak were advised to change residences and change their contact details to avoid detection from militant forces.

Members of Parliament are looking into official response of a massive disclosure of personal details concerning approximately 19k Afghans who had requested to relocate to Britain to escape militant rule.

Data Disclosure Was Discovered

A spreadsheet including private information, including names, addresses and occasionally family information, was inadvertently disclosed by a worker employed at special operations center in February 2022.

The leak was discovered only in August 2023, when details of multiple applicants who had applied to settle in Britain were posted on social media.

Regime's Resources

“There seems to be a false assumption that militant forces do not have the same sort of facilities that we have,” she told MPs.

“We left it all behind in Afghanistan; they possess it. If they have a contact number, they can trace you down to within metres. That's precisely what specialized teams did.”

When questioned about if militant forces had access to advanced decryption, Person A stated: “They've got everything.”

Consequences of the Data Breach

Early investigations submitted to the investigation estimated that at least 49 family members and associates of people concerned by the breach had been executed.

A superinjunction regarding the incident was implemented in last year and restricted any information about it from being made public until July 2025.

Safety Measures

Given injunction limitations, the source and the non-governmental organization she was working with informed affected households they were supporting that they had “suspicions that certain devices had been breached”.

“We recommended that they moved where feasible and changed their contact details. That constituted the crucial data that, if authorities had access to such data, would result in identification and capture,” she said.

Contested Findings

The whistleblower disputed that an official review conducted by a former official had been wrong to conclude that the acquisition of the information by the regime was “unlikely to substantially change current risk levels”.

“The important fact is that these Afghans are not standing up to the authorities; they remain concealed. All concerns relate to past work history.”

Person A described terrible abuse endured by concerned people, comprising electrocution, waterboarding, and physical abuse.

“We have had four-year-old children who have had their arms broken to force relatives to say where someone is,” she testified.