Boko Haram Leaks Personal Information Of SSS

Personnel records of former and current members of Nigeria's top domestic spy agency, including home addresses and names of immediate family members, has been leaked onto the Internet. They leaked in a threatening message that claimed to come from a radical Islamist sect that's killed hundreds of people this year alone.

The leak of personal data of more than 60 past and current employees of Nigeria's State Security Service remained easily accessible on the Internet for days and had details about the agency's director-general, including his mobile phone number, bank account particulars, and contact information for his son. Many of the agents listed who could be reached by the AP said they received no official warning from the spy agency that their information had been posted online nor been otherwise alerted.

The material has been deleted from the comment section of a website, but the security breach astonished veterans and calls into question whether Nigeria's intelligence community, whose agents already have released suspected terrorists out of religious and ethnic sympathies, are too compromised from within to stop the violence now plaguing Africa's most populous nation.

"This is a national embarrassment," said one Nigerian intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as information about the leak was not to have been made public.

Many agents for the typically secretive agency are preoccupied with concealing their identities, as most try to blend unnoticed into society.

The State Security Service, created in 1986 by then-military ruler Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, monitors domestic dissent in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation of more than 160 million people. Though geared toward stopping terrorism and destabilising coups, the agency routinely faces criticism for targeting government critics. In Abuja, Nigeria's capital, the agency operates out of cars made to look like the many green taxis that roam the streets. Plain-clothed agents of the service routinely question foreign journalists at airports, border crossings and on city streets if they see reporters conducting interviews.

Agents carrying assault rifles often guard major events in the country. Many agents for the typically secretive agency are preoccupied with concealing their identities, as most try to blend unnoticed into society. The information leak came in two postings earlier this month on a website that provides rewritten news on Nigeria.

The first posting threatened to kill agents of the State Security Service on behalf of Boko Haram, a radical Islamist sect responsible for more than 660 killings this year alone in Nigeria. The second posting simply offered a block of text containing biographical and other details about the agents.

 via - SABC