Dissident republicans are claiming to be in possession of leaked information about Northern Ireland police officers circulating on WhatsApp after a data blunder.
Hundreds of police officers have voiced fears for their safety following the data breach that affected 10,000 officers and staff.
Simon Byrne, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), apologised on Thursday over the “industrial-scale breach of data”.
The breach happened when the PSNI responded to a Freedom of Information request seeking the number of officers and staff at all ranks and grades in the organisation.
In a published response, a table was embedded containing ranks and grade data of all the force’s employees.
It also included the surnames, initials, locations and departments for all PSNI staff, many of whom keep their jobs secret even from friends and family for their own security.
The leaked data was potentially viewable by the public for up to three hours and prompted fears that officers could be forced to move homes and leave their jobs.
The Police Federation for Northern Ireland (PFNI) says its members are appalled at the blunder.
We’re taking steps to reassess whether we need to redeploy some specialist officers away from their usual place of work— Simon Byrne
Assistant chief constable Chris Todd apologised earlier this week to officers for the “unacceptable” breach.
It emerged on Wednesday that PSNI was also investigating a second data breach, with a police-issue laptop, radio and spreadsheet containing the names of more than 200 officers and staff, believed to have been stolen from a Newtownabbey car on 6 July.
Mr Byrne told the media on Thursday: “I am deeply sorry about what has happened when we have seen an industrial-scale breach of data that has gone into the public domain.
“We quickly established a critical incident command structure ... so that we can work flat out to get answers to the questions that are on everybody’s lips, both within the organisations and beyond that.
“An early worst-case scenario that we have been dealing with is that third parties would attempt to get this data to intimidate, corrupt or indeed cause harm to our officers and staff.
A police vehicle is attacked with petrol bombs during an illegal dissident march in Londonderry in April— (Getty Images)
“We are now aware that dissident republicans claim to be in possession of some of this information circulating on WhatsApp, and as we speak we are advising officers and staff about how to deal with that and any further risk that they face.”
Ian Acheson, senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project, had previously told The Independent that even if “bad actors” had not gained access to the information, they would use the possibility that they had seen it to capitalise on its “psychological, manipulation and propaganda value.
Mr Byrne said he would not be stepping down, explaining that the priority was remaining alert to the safety and welfare of officers and staff.
He said no police officers had been moved from their home.
“One of the things we’ve done under the leadership is establish a group to look at real-time concerns about threat and risk,” Mr Byrne said.
“We’ve had over 500 referrals to that service, which is real-time triaging the level of risk that we perceive officers to be facing and then we’re offering them that advice.
“We’re taking steps this afternoon to reassess in some cases, which I won’t go into for operational reasons, whether we need to redeploy some specialist officers away from the usual place of work to a new location.”
The laptop and documents stolen in Newtownabbey had not been recovered, he confirmed. The devices could be wiped remotely, and laptops are protected by a password.
“So we’re quite confident that any information on those devices will not be accessible by a third party,” Mr Byrne said.
In February, senior detective John Caldwell was seriously injured when he was shot in Co Tyrone.
Earlier this year, Mr Byrne said he received briefings almost every day about plots to attack and kill his officers, adding that the threat from dissident republicans remained a “real worry”.
