Copyright independent
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has recorded 49 data breaches over the past four years within the unit handling applications from Afghans seeking relocation to the UK. Incidents include an official leaving a laptop open on a train and a sensitive email being accidentally sent to the Civil Service Sports & Social Club, which has 140,000 members. David Williams, the MoD's top civil servant, admitted that a major February 2022 breach, involving 33,000 lines of data, was due to a lack of appropriate secure systems. Five of these breaches were serious enough to be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which fined the MoD £350,000 for some 'blind copy' email disclosures. The Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme has been consistently plagued by poor data security, potentially putting the lives of Afghan applicants at risk.
