Woodward Comments on Taliban Acquisition of Sensitive Afghan Databases
John D. Woodward Jr., Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, is quoted in an Associated Press (AP) article discussing the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul and the resulting acquisition of databases containing personal identifiable information (PII) on United States allies and contractors.
The article, titled “US-built databases a potential tool of Taliban repression,” breaks down the information in these databases and how they could be used by the Taliban to find and intimidate those who worked with or allied with the U.S. prior to their takeover. The most troubling acquisition are those of election/statistics and financial databases, which has detailed PII on millions of Afghans. Woodward stated that he is worries about intelligence agencies hostile to the U.S. getting access to these troves of data, including those in Pakistan, China, Russia, and Iran.
The full article can be read on AP‘s website.
John D. Woodward, Jr. is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. During his twenty-year CIA career, John served as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service and as a technical intelligence officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology, with assignments in Washington D.C., East Asia, Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. His publications include Biometrics: Identity Assurance in the Information Age (McGraw-Hill, 2003) and Army Biometric Applications: Identifying and Addressing Sociocultural Concerns (RAND, 2001). Read more about Professor Woodward on his faculty profile.