Detectives carried out a search in the town of Lurgan in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, on Wednesday and arrested a 39-year-old man as part of "one piece of a large-scale operation," Hill said. UK broadcaster senior Ireland correspondent, David Blevins, reported that police were not investigating the data breach itself but arrested the man after the leaked data had been widely circulated online, the report said. Last week, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) suffered a massive data leak that left the personal details of all its officers and staff freely accessible on the internet for up to three hours. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd said that the names, ranks, work locations and other personal data of all police and civilian personnel had been leaked, except their home addresses. Media reported that around 10,000 police officers in Northern Ireland were affected. The PSNI admitted that the data breach was an emergency and apologized for what it said was caused by "simple human error." Similar security breaches involving the personal data of thousands of police officers were reported in the UK counties of Norfolk and Suffolk on Tuesday and the Cumbria county on August 11. After the breach in Northern Ireland, local police chief Simon Byrne said that dissident republicans in Northern Ireland had claimed to be in possession of the leaked personal data. In recent years, Northern Irish police officers have often been targeted by republican paramilitary groups seeking to break away from the United Kingdom and reunite with the Republic of Ireland. In March, the terrorist threat level in Northern Ireland was raised to "severe."
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