Dailymail:
A massive cache of stolen top-secret documents published in The Guardian has handed a ‘gift’ to terrorists, the head of MI5 warned last night.
In a blistering attack, Andrew Parker said the publication of confidential files leaked by US fugitive Edward Snowden had caused huge ‘harm’ to the capability of Britain’s intelligence services.
Security officials say the exposé amounts to a ‘guide book’, advising terrorists on the best way to avoid detection when plotting an atrocity.
In Whitehall, it is considered to have caused the greatest damage to the Western security apparatus in history. In his first public speech since taking the job earlier this year, Mr Parker said the leaks handed the ‘advantage’ to terrorists and were a ‘gift they need to evade us and strike at will’.
He said there were several thousand Islamist extremists living in the UK who ‘see the British people as a legitimate target’.
The security services were working round the clock to stop the fanatics, but MI5 was now ‘tackling threats on more fronts than ever before’.
Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, fled the US in May with thousands of classified documents about the NSA and GCHQ, which he gave to The Guardian.
The newspaper has since published tens of thousands of words on the secret techniques used by GCHQ to monitor emails, phone records and communications on the internet.
The first Guardian revelations came in early June, when it detailed how the NSA – which supplies intelligence to GCHQ, the organisation which gathers intelligence for MI5 and MI6 – had ‘direct access’ to the computer systems of AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Paltalk, Skype, Yahoo and YouTube.
The newspaper also revealed how GCHQ has access to a network of cables carrying international phone calls and internet traffic and is processing vast amounts of ‘personal information’.
By the time his identity as the source of the leaks emerged, Snowden had fled his home in Hawaii for Hong Kong. After a week in hiding, he travelled to Moscow, where he remains out of the reach of US authorities.
In August, police detained David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours at Heathrow airport. Mr Miranda had been carrying intelligence files leaked by Snowden.
At the time it emerged David Cameron had authorised the destruction of computers at The Guardian offices. Security concerns were so acute that Mr Cameron sent Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to demand that Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger destroy the files after warning they could fall into the hands of terrorists.
Members of GCHQ supervised the smashing of laptops and hard drives at the newspaper’s offices.
Mr Parker said: ‘What we know about the terrorists, and the detail of the capabilities we use against them, together represent our margin of advantage. That margin gives us the prospect of being able to detect their plots and stop them.
When did the Intelligence Chief start sounding like little girls. The CIA supported “Terrorist” or as GWB claimed TROPeace are just scaring the pants off these little Stasi freaks in GB and the US. We need to fire all the incumbents & start over!