WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th December, 2022) A US military device used to capture the biometric data of mostly Afghans and Iraqis was sold on eBay to a German security researcher in August for $149.95, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The memory card of the SEEK II device contained the Names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints and iris scans of 2,632 people, mostly suspected and known terrorists, but also people who had worked for the US government or who had been stopped at checkpoints. The last time the device had been used was in 2012 near Kandahar.
It appeared that US military leaders at the time thought that collecting biometric data would help root out Taliban agents inside US bases in Afghanistan, amid a string of incidents involving Afghan forces attacking American troops.
Over the past year, a small group of researchers at a European hacker association called the Chaos Computer Club bought six biometric capture devices on eBay for analysis, following concerns that the Taliban had seized such devices after the US evacuation from Afghanistan.
Two of the four SEEK devices the group bought contained sensitive data. The second appeared to be last used in 2013 in Jordan and contained the fingerprints and iris scans of US service members.
It is unclear how the devices made their way onto eBay. The Pentagon said it could not comment on the data unless it had reviewed it.
