A Brazilian leak of Afghans’ personally identifiable information threatened the lives of those who sought to escape the Taliban in the years after the terror group seized control of Afghanistan.

Last month, Elizabeth Lynn, the Director of Government Relations for nonprofit Operation Recovery, discovered a security breach on a website run by the government of Brazil, one of few countries to continue offering humanitarian visas to Afghans after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Within the website was a hyperlink to a list of dozens of Afghans whose petitions for humanitarian visas had been rejected. The list included applicants’ full names, dates of birth, passport numbers, and the number of family members affiliated with their requests. In total, more than 100 individuals were listed.

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Most rejected passport holders held standard P–series passports, but several rejected applicants had O- and SE-series passports, which were likely issued to employees of former Afghan government ministries. Another rejected applicant is a former Special Operator whom Operation Recovery has been working with since 2021.

As employees and military personnel from the former Afghan government, these individuals, and likely others on the list, are at risk of reprisal. Though the Taliban still claim that their former enemies will have amnesty inside Afghanistan, killings of former Afghan government affiliates continue to be reported weekly inside Afghanistan.

Lynn was devastated by the discovery, given that Afghans “have been killed or imprisoned and tortured when they are identified by careless releases of information.” The tranche of applicants whose rejections had been released were all interviewed by Brazil in 2023. Operation Recovery was concerned that the subset of rejected applicants interviewed in 2024 would also be made available, expanding the number of impacted individuals.

Though the Washington Examiner did not receive a response to its inquiry to the Brazilian government about the leak, the hyperlinked text and associated PDF were removed from the web within 24 hours of press contact.

The Brazilian leak is one of several that have come to light in recent months. It is also the most concerning. Recent leaks from the United Kingdom, for instance, were not the result of a deliberate public breach from an entity attempting to respond to the threats Afghans experience in their homeland. Brazil’s oversight also outstrips concerns associated with the ongoing availability of images and names of U.S. allies within newly-released Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) content, as the highly sensitive information the Brazilian government shared could easily be utilized by the Taliban to track enemies and their family members.

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Lynn expressed immense gratitude at the removal of the list, considering that Brazil remains one of few options where Afghans are able to find safety amid the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and deportation campaigns in Iran, Pakistan, and Tajikistan that have returned over 2.5 million Afghans to their homeland over the past 18 months.

“I hope other nations, in their effort to support our allies, take note of why sharing PII publicly is dangerous,” Lynn said.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the host of the Afghanistan Project.