News Report: Nigerian News Bloggers Under Renewed Security Surveillance

Since the outbreak of protests which removed the Tunisian and Egyptian leaders from power and currently threatening to oust the Libyan leader, the Nigerian security apparatus have placed Nigerian news bloggers under renewed security surveillance, chidi opara reports have learnt.

High level insiders in the State Security Service(SSS) and National Intelligence Agency(NIA) have confirmed to us that major Nigerian news bloggers are under renewed security surveillance because of the protests in North Africa. It is believed that the Tunisian and Egyptian protests were facilitated by news bloggers.

One major surveillance method, security contacts informed, is "e-mail flagging", a sysytem by which the e-mail address of a targeted news blog is typed into an electronic apparatus with specific coded commands. This apparatus alerts security operatives whenever the targeted e-mail address sends or receives mails from certain persons or organizations.

Another major surveillance method, chidi opara reports also learnt is "e-mail bugging", this system involves sending mails with links and/or attachments with certain codes embedded, to a targeted e-mail address. When the recipient open the links and/or attachments, the password is extracted, stored and sent to the sender's e-mail address. This password is used to read mails sent and received by the targeted e-mail address.

Although, we have not been able so far to confirm the specific bloggers that are targeted, but we can confirm now that most of those targeted  are based in Nigeria.

chidi opara reports' investigation indicates that there are fears in Nigerian security circles that a certain presidential candidate in the forthcoming general election is planning to incite his supporters to start anti-government protests if he does not win. The presidential candidate known to have large followers at the grassroots, also have activists as his running mate and spokesperson.

This Journal's web Administrator revealed that "last week alone, our service provider notified me that five suspicious activities were noticed in our e-mail account which resulted in five password changes."