#information-commissioners-office

#information-commissioners-office

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has recorded 49 data breaches over the past four years concerning applications from Afghans seeking sanctuary in the UK. Incidents include an MoD official leaving a laptop open on a train and an "officially sensitive" email being accidentally sent to the 140,000-member Civil Service Sports & Social Club. These new revelations follow a "catastrophic" February 2022 breach where a spreadsheet with 33,000 lines of data, affecting 18,700 Afghan applicants, was erroneously emailed out.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted there have been more than 12 times as many data breaches linked to its Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap) programme than previously thought. Until now, a total of four breaches were known to have hit Arap, a scheme established back in April 2021 to bring Afghan citizens at risk of Taliban persecution to safety in the UK. However, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) figures released to the BBC, the true number is actually 49.