Britain's Defence Secretary John Healey apologized for the leak and told the House of Commons that the super-injunction had been 'deeply uncomfortable.'BENJAMIN CREMEL/AFP/Getty Images
Revelations about a military data breach involving Afghans who supported British soldiers, and an unprecedented publication ban that kept the breach secret for nearly two years, have caused an uproar in Britain and raised questions about freedom of speech.
On Tuesday, Defence Secretary John Healey stunned MPs by announcing that his department had won court approval to lift a super-injunction that had been put in place by the then-Conservative government since Sept. 1, 2023. The super-injunction had banned the disclosure of any information pertaining to a data leak that included personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghans who had helped British forces fight the Taliban from 2001 to August, 2021, when the Taliban swept back into power.
The leak was considered so serious that the government introduced a special relocation program for some of those included in the data set, without revealing anything to the public or to Parliament. It’s not clear if the leak caused anyone to face retaliation, but a senior Taliban official told the Daily Telegraph this week that they’d obtained the information almost immediately after the breach and used it to hunt down “traitors.”
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Mr. Healey apologized for the leak and told the House of Commons that the super-injunction had been “deeply uncomfortable.”
“I have felt deeply concerned about the lack of transparency to Parliament and the public,” he said. He also acknowledged that “my statement will prompt many questions.”
Super-injunctions are rare in Britain, and they’ve been used mainly by celebrities seeking to keep personal information or scandals private. Typical injunctions are issued by judges and they prohibit the publication of information deemed to be confidential. A super-injunction goes one step further by also banning the disclosure of the very existence of the injunction and the court proceedings.
This was the first time the British government had sought a super-injunction. The Defence Ministry also kept MPs in the dark to prevent them from using their parliamentary privilege to reveal any information.
The data breach occurred in February, 2022, and it involved a military official who had been tasked with assessing applicants under an Afghan relocation program. He inadvertently sent what he thought was a list of 150 applicants to someone in Afghanistan. His e-mail included a spreadsheet that contained personal details of 18,714 applicants as well as their family members, bringing the total number affected to around 100,000.
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The mishap wasn’t discovered until August, 2023, when the details of nine individuals appeared on a Facebook page by someone who threatened to publish the entire list. Several British media outlets also became aware of the leak, which prompted the government to obtain the super-injunction. It was extended at several subsequent closed-door hearings.
The government argued the injunction was necessary to protect those affected from being killed or threatened by the Taliban. It also relocated around 5,000 people from the list under a secret resettlement program. They were among 35,000 Afghans who worked with the British military and have been resettled in Britain under separate schemes that were made public.
Mr. Healey, who took over as Defence Secretary after Labour’s victory a year ago, commissioned a review of the super-injunction. It concluded that there was little evidence the Taliban was conducting a campaign of retribution or that it had even obtained the list.
The report added that the Taliban already had access to information about potential collaborators from public sources and from Afghanistan’s military. “We believe it is unlikely the dataset would be the single, or definitive, piece of information enabling or prompting the Taliban to act.”
Mr. Healey confirmed that the officer responsible for the leak was still working in government and had offered a “sincere apology.” He also said the Metropolitan Police concluded that no criminal investigation was warranted.
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In lifting the super-injunction this week, Justice Martin Chamberlain of the High Court said the case had raised “serious free speech concerns.”
“The grant of a super-injunction had the effect of completely shutting down the ordinary mechanisms of accountability which operate in a democracy. This led to what I described as a ‘scrutiny vacuum,’” he wrote in his ruling.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said ministers in the former Conservative government “have serious questions to answer about how this was ever allowed to happen.”
A parliamentary committee plans to investigate and the Speaker of the House of Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, said Wednesday that “this episode raises significant constitutional issues considering whether lessons need to be learned.”
Several others have raised similar concerns.
The super-injunction “stopped any free speech or examination in Parliament, and we are still none the wiser as to who was responsible or why it happened,” former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith told MPs.
“In all this disgraceful betrayal of the people by their own government, I feel only shame,” former home secretary Suella Braverman said on X.
Former defence secretary Ben Wallace, who made the initial decision to seek the super-injunction, has defended his actions. “It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover-up. I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out,” he wrote in the Telegraph.