authoritarian swine, Rights

Missing The Obvious Question

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Suddenly citizen databases are bad…

US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression
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.

…unless they’re registering Americans. So they can oppress us.

If American-built databases of Afghans are bad, why aren’t American-built databases of Americans equally bad?

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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One thought on “Missing The Obvious Question”

  1. Not working out too good for the Afghans or Americans.
    These reports come only days after it was found that US officials in Afghanistan had “naively” handed over a “kill list” comprising names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to the Taliban so they could be allowed to enter the Taliban-controlled perimeter around the Hamid Karzai International Airport. What the documents actually did was help identify Afghan staff members and job applicants who were inadvertently left behind at the abandoned British Embassy in Kabul.
    https://guardingindia.com/diplomacy/pakistani-officers-joins-taliban-efforts-for-locating-raw-spies-using-leaked-us-database/

    My heart just breaks for the people and the dogs left behind by this administration. And no, I don’t think it is due to incompetance.

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