The Ministry of Defence has admitted to 49 separate data breaches in the past four years at the unit handling relocation applications from Afghans seeking safety in the UK. Four out of the 49 breaches were already publicly known, including the leak in 2022 of a spreadsheet containing details of almost 19,000 people fleeing the Taliban. The breaches have raised concerns about a culture of lax security among those working on the resettlement scheme. Lawyers representing Afghans affected by data breaches have called for the Ministry of Defence to be fully transparent with those affected and the wider public. The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy was set up in April 2021 to help people who feared their lives were at risk because they had worked with British armed forces in Afghanistan and to resettle eligible applicants and their family members in the UK. The scheme has been dogged by revelations about poor data security, potentially putting the lives of Afghans who worked with British forces at risk. Seven of the 49 data breaches were sufficiently serious to require MoD officials to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO has said it is limited in the amount of information it still holds on those breaches and why it didn’t take further action but that its work with the MoD is “ongoing”. A Labour government source blamed previous Conservative administrations for inadequate data protection measures and said new software has been introduced and other changes made since Labour came to power last year. A Conservative Party spokesman said the data leak should never have happened and was an unacceptable breach of data protection protocols. An MoD spokesperson said the department takes data security extremely seriously and is committed to ensuring that any incidents are dealt with properly.
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