US spies on Nigerian security agencies

Indications emerged on Saturday that the United States has been spying on the Nigeria's security agencies, especially the State Security Service, and probably the Presidency.

In a report published in New York Times, Edward Snowden, an American computer specialist, who worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency and as a contractor with the US National Security Agency, stated that Nigeria's SSS was one of the security agencies across the globe that the N.S.A. had been listening in on.

He said briefs on the information gleaned from intercepting of telephone conversations and hacking of computers of the SSS, other security agencies in Nigeria and other countries are delivered to the office of the US President, Barrack Obama every morning.

"By many accounts, the agency provides more than half of the intelligence nuggets delivered to the White House early each morning in the President's Daily Brief - a measure of success for American spies. One document boasts that listening in on Nigerian State Security Service had provided items for the briefing "nearly two dozen" times. In every international crisis, American policy makers look to the N.S.A. for inside information," Snowden told New York Times.

The release of documents that proved that the NSA had been eavesdropping on the communications of world leaders, including US allies, had caused diplomatic rows, with Germany and some other countries protesting.

Snowden also noted that the NSA had obtained thousands of classified documents, containing secrets of governments around the world, pointing to a possibility that it might have obtained secret documents of the Federal Government of Nigeria, or tapped President Goodluck Jonathan's phone conversations.

Snowden, who is on a temporary political asylum in Russia, disclosed classified details of several top-secret United States, Israeli, and British government mass surveillance programmes to the press.

He started releasing the NSA's documents in June and the documents he has released so far show that the US has been spying most countries in the world.

by Allwell Okpi (PUNCH NEWSPAPER)