oh dear, this sounds so ridiculous!
Premium Times is reporting that the Jonathan administration has
awarded an Israeli firm, Elbit Systems, with headquarters in Haifa, a
$40million contract to help it spy on citizens’ computers and Internet communications under the guise of intelligence gathering and national security – lolz!
Oh in case you don’t know, Elbit Systems is a world leader in the fields of intelligence analysis
and cyber defense, with proven solutions highly suitable for countries,
armies and critical infrastructure sites.
Premium times claims that the “new” contract will
now help the Jonathan administration access all computers and read all
email correspondences of citizens in what is clearly, an infringement on
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression.
The growth path of the Internet in Nigeria has also been dramatic,
rising from a mere 200,000 Internet users in 2002 to 47 million this
year, according to data from the Global Internet user, one of the
Internet audit groups.
This development has not always gladdened public officials in Nigeria
many who have expressed open displeasure at the use of the Internet by
social media activists and the power of its possibilities as an
empowering medium for popular communication. The calls for regulation
have been loud in both the administration and in the Nigerian
legislature.
According to Premium times, “The presidency had wanted this contract to be a top secret,” said one
of our sources. “The presidency did not envisage that Elbit was going to
make it public. Monitoring computers and Internet use is a contentious issue and the National Security Adviser had tried to keep the contract secret.”
Elbit says it will take it two years to complete the project, by which
time it claimed, the administration will have “a highly advanced
end-to-end solution, [to] supports every stage of the intelligence
process, including the collection of
the data from multiple sources, databases and sensors, processing of
the information, supporting intelligence personnel in the analysis and
evaluation of the information and disseminating the intelligence to the
intended recipient…[that] will be integrated with various data sources,
including Elbit Systems’ Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) solution and
Elbit Systems’ PC Surveillance Systems (PSS), an advance solution for covert intelligence gathering.”
Presidential spokespersons, Reuben Abati, and Doyin Okupe were not
available for comments Wednesday. They didn’t answer or return calls
seeking comments.
Calls to Elbit’s headquarters in Haifa, Israel, were also unanswered.
Shari Clarkson, a spokesperson at the company’s subsidiary in the United
States declined comments on the contract saying only Dalia Rosen, a
spokesperson based in Israel, could comment. Rosen’s phone was
unanswered.
Hehe, for real?!
