23:34
Tieng Anh Vui
Leaked surveillance programme details have been the "most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever", a senior UK security expert has said.
Former No 10 adviser Sir David Omand said he assumed data leaked by ex-US intelligence worker Edward Snowden was being analysed by Russia and China.
He said the breach was worse than that by the Cambridge spy ring in the 1950s.
The Guardian has said it will continue to publish leaks by Mr Snowden, who is now in Russia.
Damaging
Sir David, the former head of the UK's communications surveillance centre GCHQ, told the Times: "You have to distinguish between the original whistleblowing intent to get a debate going, which is a responsible thing to do, and the stealing of 58,000 top-secret British security documents and who knows how many American documents, which is seriously, seriously damaging.
"The assumption the experts are working on is that all that information or almost all of it will now be in the hands of Moscow and Beijing.
"It's the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever, much worse than Burgess and Maclean in the 1950s."
Donald Duart Maclean and Guy Burgess were among a group of British officials who met at Cambridge University and passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and into the 1950s, other notable members being Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt.
In May, Mr Snowden leaked information to the Guardian about mass surveillance programmes such as the US National Security Agency's Prism and GCHQ's Tempora operations.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said the publication of sensitive information about UK intelligence programmes has been damaging.
Mr Clegg said stories in the Guardian about GCHQ "would have been of immense interest to people who want harm".
There was however a legitimate debate to be had about the use of mass surveillance programmes, he added.
Temporary asylum
His comments came after the Guardian vowed to publish more leaks from Mr Snowden.
The director general of the security service MI5, Andrew Parker, warned in a speech on Tuesday that the disclosure of the "reach and limits" of GCHQ's capabilities was a "gift" to terrorists.
Mr Parker dismissed suggestions that the agencies were trawling through people's private lives for anything that looked interesting as "utter nonsense".
Responding to Mr Parker's criticism, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger insisted his newspaper was right to publish the information.
Asked about Mr Parker's suggestion that publishing the documents was helping terrorists, Mr Rusbridger said: "They will always say that. You read histories of intelligence and you go back to the 1990s and the security people were saying the same."
Mr Snowden has been given temporary asylum in Russia. His father Lon arrived there on Thursday to visit him.
In the US, Mr Snowden faces charges of theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence.
Đăng ký: Tieng Anh Vui
Posted in: 
0 comments:
Post a Comment