MI5 chief claims Guardian leaks will enable terrorists to attack UK ‘at will’
Britain’s top spy has issued an apocalyptic warning of the threat posed to the UK by a series of leaks from GCHQ by renegade CIA operative Edward Snowden in the Guardian, saying that they have handed the advantage to terrorists to attack the UK ‘at will’.
Andrew Parker, director general of MI5, said that by divulging intelligence techniques an estimated ‘several thousand’ Islamist terrorists currently living in the UK now had the information they needed to evade detection.
An estimated 58,000 GCHQ files have been leaked thus far in what is believed to be the worst ever security breach to hit British intelligence.
In his first speech since taking office Parker said: “It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques. Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will.
“Unfashionable as it might seem, that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.”
Describing the loss of a ‘margin of advantage’ his organisation held over terrorists; that is knowledge if the spy agencies capabilities, Parker added: “That margin gives us the prospect of being able to detect their plots and stop them. But that margin is under attack.”