The US national security leaks perpetrated by former NSA contract worker Edward Snowden are a “guidebook for terrorists” who want to strike the UK, the head of Britain’s intelligence service said in a speech Tuesday.
The massive document dump by the tech geek in May has handed a “gift” to thousands of terrorists looking to attack, MI5 Director General Andrew Parker said at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists,” Parker said. “It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will.”
The Snowden leaks are said to contain at least 58,000 files from the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to the London’s Telegraph newspaper, and it’s feared there could be more to come.
Parker defended the right to keep some government information secret.
“Unfashionable as it might seem, that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm,” he said.
The spy chief, who was making his first public speech since taking the helm in April, is worried about terrorists within the United Kingdom who may be planning attacks.
He also said the information in the reports from GCHQ was crucially important to the safety of UK citizens.
“We are facing an international threat and GCHQ provides many of the intelligence leads upon which we rely,” Parker said.
The MI5 chief said the agency was “tackling threats on more fronts than ever before” and he said he expected one or two attempts at major acts of terrorism in Britain annually.
He dismissed claims that GCHQ, the electronic-eavesdropping agency, was listening in on everyday communications as “utter nonsense” and defended the use of snooping technology.
“Far from being gratuitous harvesters of private information, in practice we focus our work very carefully and tightly against those who intend harm,” he said, adding that safeguards are in place to protect citizens.
“In some quarters there seems to be a vague notion that we monitor everyone and all their communications, browsing at will through people’s private lives for anything that looks interesting,” he said.
“That is, of course, utter nonsense.”
GCHQ is based in southwest England and monitors communications worldwide for intelligence purposes.