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Information on terrorists, collaborators and people stopped at checkpoints during the mission ofUS army in Afghanistan have entered the availability of a group of security researchers who have purchased devices equipped with biometric technology up eBay. This is the European hacker association Chaos Computer Cluband of the researcher Matthias Marxwho bought 6 of these devices (among other things at ridiculously low prices), according to the New York Times.
The devices in question would be of type SEE II and they would keep a lot of data on fingerprints, iris scans, personal informationstored in the memory cards that are inside them. The data comes from more than 2600 peopleinspected by the US military during the mission in Afghanistan in search of terrorists, spies and undercover agents.
The metadata thus recovered reveals that the SEEK II devices were used until the summer of 2012 in KandaharAfghanistan, about a year after the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. Not the first time that sources of information refer to US military biometric devices dispersed in Afghanistan: already a year ago, in fact, a report by The Intercept reported that the Taliban had seized US military biometric devices with similar characteristics.
Another device has been used in Jordan in 2013 and contained the fingerprints and iris scans of US military personnel. This is therefore extremely sensitive information classified as confidential, which could seriously jeopardize the safety of the people involved if it fell into the wrong hands.
However, the group of researchers who proceeded with the purchase ensured that they did so only for prevent this information from becoming public: I will continue to buy devices like this just to make sure that I permanently delete the data on them.
However, at least two aspects of this curious story remain surprising. First, that the US military did not destroy the memory cards with the personal information resulting from their investigations or, at the very least, their removal from the devices. Secondly, that eBay allows such devices to be sold, when its regulation categorically prohibits the sale of products with personally identifiable information. Vendors who have sold biometric devices, almost always for less than $200, are identified in Rhino Trade and Tech-Mart.
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