At London's Daily Mail, "'The Guardian has handed a gift to terrorists', warns MI5 chief: Left-wing paper's Edward Snowden leaks caused 'greatest damage to western security in history' say Whitehall insiders":
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’....
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.
‘But that margin is under attack. Reporting from GCHQ is vital to the safety of this country and its citizens.
‘GCHQ intelligence has played a vital role in stopping many of the terrorist plots that MI5 and the police have tackled in the past decade.
‘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.’
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