The Federal Government
has been monitoring the social media accounts of Nigerians who are suspected of
having links with various terrorist groups, including Boko Haram and the
Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, according to Sunday Punch
Punch learnt that through covert operations, which have been going on for a while,
security agencies hack into the Facebook and Twitter accounts of those they are
monitoring.
The move, it was
learnt, was meant to frustrate terrorist attacks on the country.
The project, which is
costing the country millions of dollars, is being managed by the Office of the
National Security Adviser.
Multiple sources, who
spoke to Punch on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorised to inform the press about the security checks, stated that the
administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan approved the request by
security agencies to spy on targeted sections of the population, mainly
religious extremists and radicalised individuals.
It was gathered that
the project is being coordinated by some foreign firms, including an Israeli
firm, Elbit System.
Punch learnt that the local espionage involves hacking of phones, email accounts,
social media accounts and bugging of telephone conversations of persons of
interest.
A source said, “The
surveillance system is not being used to target everyone, as people may want to
believe. It is only deployed to get intelligence on specific targets because it
would be hard and difficult to use such system to spy on all Nigerians; the
amount of data would be too huge and staggering for the assessors to sort and
manage.
“Basically, the system
is used to hack into emails and phones of targets, and the targets are those
who are suspected of having ties with terrorists, whether Boko Haram, ISIS or
any other criminal element.”
It was also learnt that
the system had greatly assisted security agencies to nip in the bud and also
frustrate many terror plots and attacks across the country.
-Punch
No comments:
Post a Comment