‘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.