Al Assoomi Warns of Espionage Risk From Data Leaks

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

Small Data Leaks Can Expose State Security

A photograph, an employee’s name or even the time of a meeting can help a foreign power map a country’s weak spots, Shura Council member Adel Al Assoomi has warned, saying small scraps of data can become weapons in the wrong hands.

The former Arab Parliament president said collusion with a foreign state was among the gravest threats to national security because it struck at sovereignty and attacked the state from within.

‘Small information builds the big picture,’ Al Assoomi said.

He warned that a single detail might look harmless on its own. But when photographs, names, locations, meeting times and social media posts are collected and studied together, they can reveal infrastructure, future plans and security gaps.

Open-source intelligence methods had made such scraps far easier to piece together, he said, raising the stakes for public servants and ordinary citizens alike.

‘Protecting national security begins with protecting information and loyalty to the homeland, as they are the first line of defence,’ he said.

Al Assoomi said legislative institutions must update laws to deter espionage and the leaking of state secrets, while keeping pace with new risks in information security and artificial intelligence.

He said they must also oversee executive bodies to ensure cybersecurity rules and data-protection standards are properly applied.

Schools, universities and the media had a part to play too, teaching people that protecting information was a shared civic duty rather than a task left to security agencies.

He also called for greater awareness of rumours and foreign influence campaigns, saying examples of how such efforts had been countered could help build public resistance to them.

‘The goal is to transform the protection of the homeland from a slogan into a daily behaviour for every individual,’ Al Assoomi said.