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As the United States pulled its troops out of Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation, byproducts of the prolonged deployment took on new meaning and represented a new chapter of danger for the Afghan people. For two decades, the United States spearheaded the collection of information on the people of Afghanistan, both for commonplace bureaucratic reasons like payroll and employment data—and in massive databases of biometric material accessible through devices called HIIDE.
HIIDE, the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, are devices used to collect biometric data like fingerprints and iris scans and store that information on large accessible databases. Ostensibly built in order to track terrorists and potential terrorists, the program also was used to verify the identities of contractors and Afghans working with U.S. forces. The military reportedly had an early goal of getting 80% of the population of Afghanistan into the program. With the Taliban retaking control of the nation, reporting about the HIIDE program prompted fears that the equipment could be seized and used to identify and target vulnerable people.
Some sources, including those who spoke to the MIT Technology Review, claimed that the HIIDE devices offered only limited utility to any future regimes hoping to use them and that the data they access is stored remotely and therefore less of a concern. They did raise alarms, however, on the wide-reaching and detailed Afghan Personnel and Pay System (APPS), used to pay contractors and employees working for the Afghan Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense. This database contains detailed information on every member of the Afgh
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Read the original article: Lessons From History: Afghanistan and the Dangerous Afterlives of Identifying Data