Payout offered to Afghans hit by UK data breaches

The government said that Afghan citizens whose personal information was accidentally exposed by the Ministry of Defense in 2021, the compensation will be offered up to £ 4,000 in compensation, the government has said.

Data violations affected 277 people, some of whom worked for the UK government and were hidden from the rebel Taliban forces at that time.

Defense Minister Luke Pollard said that he could not “undo the previous mistakes” but promised that payment would be practically practical as quickly as “paid”.

The government hopes that the total cost will be around £ 1.6m and comes to the top of £ 350,000, which had to pay after receiving a fine from the data watchdog.

The biggest violation took place in September 2021 when Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) was working to vacate people from Afghanistan. Western soldiers chaotic return,

A collective email was sent to those who used to work with the UK government that they could be targeted by the Taliban and therefore made them eligible to move.

His email address was added to the ‘Two’ field instead of the ‘Blind Carbon Copy’ (BCC) section, which means that his names can be seen by all recipients.

The Ministry of Defense later started an internal investigation with two equal violations on September 7 and 13 of that year.

Seen Hamber, who is representing some of the affected people from Leh de Law firm, said the statement about the government’s compensation is “less information”.

“As far as we know, no consultation has been taken with the affected people or their legal advisors about this scheme – it is not clear that those criteria will be used to identify the proposed payment amount.

“In the case of our customer, he and his family spent five very scared months in hiding in Kabul that the Taliban now knew that he had assisted the UK forces and was looking for him.

“He was afraid of his life and was aware of the Taliban beating and killing others who assisted the UK forces.

“We will need to seriously review with our customer whether whatever amount is being offered now compensates for sufficiently for crisis that he has undoubtedly suffering.”

After examining the violations in 2023, Information Commissioner John Edwards said the error “a threat to life” and “let those who have a lot of our country”.

The Commissioner initially imposed a government fine of £ 1M, but it was reduced to £ 700,000 in the recognition of measures taken by the Ministry of Defense to report the incident, limiting its effects and limiting the difficulties of the situation for teams handling the transfer of employees.

It was reduced to £ 350,000 as part of a change in approach by the sentinel for public sector fine.

Declaration of compensation payment In a statement on Friday, Pollard said that his department would “improve data handling training and practices of the department”.

Earlier this week, government Announced That the ARAP scheme was shutting down new applicants, resetting 21,316 Afghans in the UK.

A home office paper published on Tuesday said that Defense Secretary John Heela admitted that the scheme “fulfilled its original objective”.

This said that the scheme can now be discontinued “at least because they can be focused on defense efforts and resources where they need the most – on the safety of our country, to combat intensity threats and to destabilize the behavior of our opponents”.