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[Timber Rattler]

How the [UK] government tried to cover up the Afghan data breach that put thousands of lives at risk and could cost taxpayers £7bn

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/15/the-most-expensive-email-in-history/?fbclid=IwY2xjawLj-MBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETF3YkxLMG5mRkMxbHEzMER0AR5QJ9RkbNlnbSzgj7FVBG_IYtgILdYscUmIkdZz05-kB28QGT0L_XA0E-Wk2A_aem_b1aA_OcaPpAwVq8xxPeIvg

No email sent in error could ever have been so expensive – or dangerous.

A Royal Marine had inadvertently – and, as it would turn out, catastrophically – circulated an email that included a spreadsheet containing the details of 25,000 Afghans, including their family members, who had helped British troops during the war with the Taliban.

The email was sent by the soldier, in charge of vetting asylum seekers, to a group of Afghan contacts in the UK that he trusted.

He worked out of Special Forces headquarters at Regent’s Park Barracks, in central London, under the command of Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins, the newly appointed First Sea Lord, who led UK Special Forces in Afghanistan.

(snip)

When journalists, including those at The Telegraph, inquired about the data breach, they were slapped with a super-injunction. By court order, The Telegraph, along with a handful of other news outlets, was prevented from disclosing any details about the error – or even the existence of the injunction itself.

(snip)

A week later, on Sept 1 – by which time Grant Shapps had been installed as his successor – the High Court granted a super-injunction “contra mundum”, meaning “against the world”, that prevented anybody knowing about the leak and the existence of the injunction itself.

It was the first time such a draconian injunction had been used by a UK government against the British press. When The Telegraph inquired about the breach late last year, its journalists were slapped with the same order.

By now, the government was running two operations. One was to stop the story getting out, and the other was to get the Afghans out of their home country and to the safety of the UK.

(snip)

Mr Justice Robin Knowles, the High Court judge who granted the super-injunction, accepted his ruling would infringe “freedom of expression and of the press,” but insisted that “the impact is justified in the particular and exceptional circumstances of this case including the risk to life and of torture”.

Instead of being granted against a named individual, or news organisation, the injunction banned anybody at all who learnt of the leak from talking about it.

(snip)

The system set up to fly in Afghans, without any public knowledge of the scheme as a result of the data breach, was now “disproportionate to the actual impact of the data loss were it to fall into the Taliban’s hands”.

By the time of the review, 16,156 individuals affected by the breach in 2022 had reached the safety of the UK. But it is only now that The Telegraph and other news organisations can tell that story.

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