Newspapers publishing state secrets are making it "a lot more difficult to keep our country and our people safe" says David Cameron
David Cameron has accused newspapers which publish state secrets of giving comfort to terrorists who want to "blow up" British families, adding those with "lah-di-dah, airy-fairy" views need to stop criticising the work of the Security Services.
Speaking at the end of a European Council summit, the prime minister said continuing to publish state secrets in newspapers was "going to make it a lot more difficult to keep our country and our people safe."
Cameron added: "We have to take a cold, hard look at this. As we stand today, there are people in the world who want to do us harm, who want to blow up our families, who want to maim people in our country.
"That is a fact. It is not a pleasant fact but it is true. We've seen it recently in Kenya. We saw it, whether it was Italians or British people in Amenas in Algeria. We've seen appalling attacks on British soil. We've seen it throughout Europe.
"That is the threat we face. So we have no choice: do we maintain properly funded, properly governed intelligence and security services, which will gather intelligence on these people, using all of the modern techniques to make sure that we can get ahead of them and stop them, or do we stop doing that?"
Referencing US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the comments will be seen as an attack on the Guardian newspaper which published state secrets released by Snowden this summer.
"What Snowden is doing and to an extent what the newspapers are doing in helping him is frankly signalling to people who mean to do us harm, how to evade and avoid intelligence and surveillance and other techniques. That is not going to make our world safer. It's going to make our world more dangerous," he continued.
Cameron furthered that it was the "first priority" of a prime minister to keep the country safe and that he had "lost count" of the plots he's seen being avoided by the work that they do and that the information gathered also "helped those countries in Europe. I make no apology for that."