More and more reports of databases, with personally identifiable information including biometrics, being now in the hands of the Taliban are being reported. No one thought to delete them? No one questioned why we were needed the data in the first place?

My hope is these unfortunate events cause organisations to revisit and change their data policies. Data minimisation, data retention, data deletion, and our audit policies should dominate our discussions now. If our data or family relatives data was part of these databases, we’d be furious and terrified.

While this is emotional, it also is rational and logical. That’s because it is human. And humans are both emotional and logical. So please don’t dismiss this as just emotion.

The choice is up to us.

Photo by Sohaib Ghyasi