LAGOS — Personnel records of former and current members of Nigeria's top domestic spy agency, including home addresses and names of immediate family members, leaked onto the Internet in a threatening message that claimed to come from a radical sect that's killed hundreds of people this year alone, The Associated Press has learned. 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 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. Marilyn Ogar, a spokeswoman for the State Security Service, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday about the leak. 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 destabilizing coups, it routinely faces criticism for targeting government critics. — AP
