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The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) of Parliament has initiated an investigation into a significant data breach that compromised the identities of numerous Afghans and British military officials. The leak led to the implementation of a super-injunction, preventing the ISC from being briefed on the matter until recently. Lord Beamish, the committee’s chairman, has demanded the immediate submission of all intelligence documents related to the breach for review.
The ISC, which oversees the activities of MI5, MI6, and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), announced on Monday that it would launch an inquiry into the intelligence community’s involvement in the data loss following an assessment of defense reports. Lord Beamish expressed concerns about the breach remaining undetected for over a year before the injunction was requested, raising constitutional issues regarding its handling. The committee emphasized that the classification of material should not serve as a reason for withholding information from them, as their mandate is to scrutinize the UK intelligence community’s operations.
According to an MoD spokesperson, there is a pressing need to understand the causes of these significant failures and ensure accountability for the previous government’s management of the situation. The leak occurred in February 2022 when an employee at the UK Special Forces headquarters mistakenly sent a spreadsheet with over 30,000 resettlement applications to an external party, believing it only contained data on 150 individuals. The breach was only identified in August 2023 when a man in Afghanistan threatened to release more information, prompting the MoD to seek a super-injunction to protect the affected individuals from potential reprisals by the Taliban.
Following the discovery of the breach, the government established the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) to facilitate the relocation of around 7,000 impacted individuals to the UK, with an estimated cost of £850m. The MoD spokesperson stated that the government would vigorously defend against any legal claims or compensation requests, dismissing them as speculative at this time. Reports suggest that the MoD does not intend to proactively offer compensation to those affected by the breach
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