N Ireland police say dissident republicans have data
Northern Ireland's police chief said on Monday that information on police officers and staff that was mistakenly released in a major data breach last week was in the hands of dissident republicans. "We are now confident that the workforce dataset is in the hands of dissident republicans," Chief Constable Simon Byrne told a press conference in Belfast. "It is therefore a planning assumption that they will use this list to generate fear and uncertainty as well as intimidating or targeting officers and staff," he added. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said last week it had published in error the names and ranks of roughly 10,000 officers and staff in response to a routine freedom of information request. The data included the work location, surnames and first initials of staff but not their home addresses, according to the PSNI. Byrne said that no officers or staff have left the organisation since the data breach. He added that a "range of cyber specialists from across the policing system" were supporting the PSNI in dealing with this "unprecedented" incident. Police are subject to sporadic attacks by dissident republicans in the province and were targeted frequently during the 30 years of conflict over British rule in Northern Ireland, which claimed more than 3,000 lives before the signing of 1998 peace accords. In March the terrorism threat level in the UK-run province was increased to "severe" in response to an assassination attempt on a senior police officer John Caldwell, later claimed by the dissident republican group the New IRA. Policing representatives in the region have spoken in the wake of the data breach of the extreme lengths to which officers will go in order hide their work for the PSNI. (AFP)