-Google locks Afghan govt accounts as Taliban seek emails
From John Nelson
KABUL: The Taliban have issued directives to ban aerial firing in Kabul and other Afghan cities.
Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, took to Twitter on Sunday and wrote that all the authorities in Kabul and other provinces of Afghanistan have been directed to arrest the individuals involved in the aerial firing. Those involved will also be disarmed and expelled from the cities.
According to Zabihullah’s statement, separate directives for identifying and penalising the individuals involved in aerial firing have been issued to the police and intelligence officials. The directives came after a celebratory aerial fire in Kabul lead to several casualties.
Several people were killed and dozens were injured after reports of celebratory gunfire in Kabul on September 3, Afghan outlet TOLOnews reported citing hospital officials. This footage by local outlet Asvaka News Agency, shows groups of people lining up outside the Kabul Surgical Centre, run by EMERGENCY NGO.
The footage was taken at midnight, the agency said. Aerial firing was heard in the Afghan capital on Friday amid reports of the Taliban closing in on resistance fighters in the country’s Panjshir region. A Taliban spokesperson warned against firing into the air, citing potential harm to civilians.
Meanwhile, An unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts have been temporarily locked down by Google, according to a person familiar with the matter, as fears grow over the digital paper trail left by former officials and their international partners. In the weeks since the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan from a US-backed government, reports have highlighted how biometric and Afghan payroll databases might be exploited by the new rulers to hunt their enemies.
In a statement on Friday, Alphabet Inc’s Google stopped short of confirming that Afghan government accounts were being locked down, saying that the company was monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and “taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts.”
One employee of the former government has told Reuters the Taliban are seeking to acquire former officials’ emails. Late last month the employee said that the Taliban had asked him to preserve the data held on the servers of the ministry he used to work for. “If I do so, then they will get access to the data and official communications of the previous ministry leadership,” the employee said.
The employee said he did not comply and has since gone into hiding. Reuters is not identifying the man or his former ministry out of concern for his safety. Publicly available mail exchanger records show that some two dozen Afghan government bodies used Google’s servers to handle official emails, including the ministries of finance, industry, higher education, and mines.
