Donald Trump 'imminent threat' alert before UN speech as Secret Service swoops

The US Secret Service has dismantled a network of electronic devices near the UN in New York ahead of a speech by the United States president.

The service revealed it had identified an "imminent threat" to Donald Trump. It comes as global leaders gather in the American city for the UN General Assembly. The network of sim cards and servers could have jammed the telephone network and prevented 911 calls from being made or answered.

The Secret Service - which is responsible for protecting Trump and other top officials - discovered some 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards scattered across multiple sites in the New York tristate area, it has said.

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The extensive network was capable of shutting down mobile networks and of protecting communication between hostile actors, it said.

According to the agency's director, Sean Curran, the "potential for disruption to our country’s telecommunications posed by this network of devices cannot be overstated".

Officials warned the devices had the capability of carrying out a wide-range of telecommunications attacks which could have included spamming networks with up to 30 million text messages a minute, which would have had “catastrophic” consequences for the city, authorities said.

There was no reporting of a specific threat to the General Assembly, but the Secret Service said it moved quickly to dismantle the network, as the respective devices were located within 35 miles of the global summit.