Snowden leaks gave terrorists 'the gift to evade us and strike Britain at will,' warns MI5 chief

[Turborama]

Source: The Independent (UK)

Leaks of secrets by Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence official, have gravely endangered national security and given terrorist groups like al-Qa’ida “the gift they need to evade us and strike at will”, the head of MI5 has warned in his first public address since taking office.

Andrew Parker, the director-general, said that the information given away by Mr Snowden - much of it to The Guardian newspaper - posed a particular threat to the work of GCHQ, the government’s communications intelligence gathering centre. “What we know about the terrorists and the details 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,” he stressed.

“But that margin is under attack. 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.” Mr Parker, who led the investigation into the 7/7 bombings, has decided to focus on this issue of leaks because he is said to believe it was one of the most crucial being faced on matters of public safety. In doing so, he has become one of the most senior officials to speak out in robust terms about the extent of the damage the government and Britain’s security and intelligence services hold has been caused by the publication of material supplied by Mr Snowden.

The undermining of security from the leaks comes, said Mr Parker, at a time when the terrorist threat to the UK has “become more diversified… more diffuse; more complicated; more unpredictable”. He added: “It remains the case there are several thousand Islamist extremists here who see the British people as a legitimate target”.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/edward-snowden-leaks-gave-terrorists-the-gift-to-evade-us-and-strike-britain-at-will-warns-mi5-chief-andrew-parker-8867399.html

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MI5 chief Andrew Parker warns of Islamist threat to UK public

By Frank Gardner
BBC security correspondent

Thousands of Islamist extremists in the UK see the British public as a legitimate target for attacks, the director general of MI5 has warned.

=snip=

He added that in the first few months of this year, there had been four major trials related to terrorist plots.

Chillingly, he reminded the public that these included plans for a 7/7-style attack with rucksack bombs, and named two other plots.

There were guilty pleas in each case, he said, with 24 terrorists convicted and sentenced to more than 260 years in jail.

Full article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24454596

[Unknown Beatle]

1. Yeah Right!

*Cough*Bullshit!*Cough*

The laws that were put in place to protect civilians, like the Patriot (Unpatriotic) Act have endangered more people than terrorists acts themselves.

[JDPriestly]

2. Nonsense. The terrorists probably figured out that they would be under surveillance

years ago.

It's the rest of us who are peaceful and minding our own business who are the targets and the victims of the surveillance and for no good reason.

I can't believe they think that we are that gullible that we believe that people clever and technically sophisticated enough to figure out how to make bombs and plan attacks (I couldn't do that, not in a million years.) wouldn't quickly figure out that their electronic communications were, if not under surveillance, certainly susceptible to surveillance. It's just absurd.

[Swagman]

3. so it's nothing to do with invading other countries and killing tens

of thousands of their citizens ?

MI5- who promoted WMD and allowed the terrorist attacks to happen in the UK even thought hey were warned.

[freshwest]

4. What could he have released that was dangerous? And to a newspaper? This is too vague.

Are they saying the NSA had data extremists could use?

I thought it was programs for gathering intel, not real intel. That the issue was capability, not data on real people who were doing things. All the people who were complaiing were talking about innocents being targeted, not people that would actually do harm - and why would that help extremists?.

And he's in Russia, are they saying he gave stuff to them and they are sharing with extremists? Why would Russia attack the UK in a clandestine manner?

Or are they claiming the Guardian is giving intel to someone? There's a lot lost with the official language being used here.

But this is an interesting angle, anyway.

[Turbineguy]

5. Snowden is a hero

until I see Osama bin Laden shaking his hand and thanking him.

[SunSeeker]

14. LOL nt

[bucolic_frolic]

6. In retrospect

The information should have been dedicated to terrorism use only
with more oversight. That would have calmed public fears of a 1984
style surveillance state and made Snowden's leaks moot.

I don't understand how western governments of all varieties with a
long legal heritage built on principles of freedom could have missed
the popular discontent that their blanket coverage helped create.

Perhaps the public is to blame too, in the sense that they are no
longer familiar with war as an all-embracing concept; the necessary
tactics of WWII are long forgotten. And while all were told there
was a war on terror underway, it was a vague concept that didn't
touch people's lives.

I think the British understand secrecy far more than the American
public since they lived through WWII and were in a sense closer
to the Cold War. Tea Party Libertarians are none too supportive
of government surveillance.

[leveymg]

7. If you want to find future terrorists, just look on your own payroll of operatives.

Something like 90 percent of all the active planners of actual terrorist attacks are later shown to be double-agents, informants, or operatives (witting and not) for the same western intelligence agencies charged with stopping them. Mr. Parker and his colleagues are either incompetent or worse.

[PeoViejo]

8. Intelligence Agencies will hire the lowest of the scum.

They get what they pay for, as the saying goes.

[leveymg]

10. From WTC '93, 9/11, 7/7, to the Boston Bombers, they never seem to learn the central lesson:

terrorists are like nitroglycerine. Don't store it inside your house or car. Better yet, just don't . . .

[NorthCarolina]

9. Snowden: Have you been convinced to hate him yet?

Or should they keep trying new angles of attack?

[polynomial]

11. Transparency of the future

Likely are efforts by Snowden or Manning.

Information governance is about managing and protecting your information to make sure it’s working for—not against—the American people. The right information governance system helps Americans find the information needed and use that knowledge to make whole life living decisions.

Transparency makes it easy for the American social structure to adhere to information policies and for the American legal system to comply with regulatory and legislative mandates. Beware not to only trust secret military tribunals.

With a centralized governance system in secrecy can essentially effectively jeopardize a free market strategy, plus avoids the discovery culture in the education system that can be companied by bias continually disrupted through a secret profiteering banking system in costs in crime investigations and military war theorist that perpetuate grief. Then maybe just maybe after ambitious prodding military secrets eventually surface that reveal the truth many times too late.

Here, the Snowden and Manning classed as treasonous but may not be.

As Da Vinci understood; the need for practitioners to study their own practices, whether the art of science or the science of art, so too do we comprehend the need to theorize those practices in order to understand them and hence to strengthen them. I can’t help but agree with Da Vinci when he says, “He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.”

Our governance is in such a secret paradox of closed door, backroom, thinking surrounded by national security of the time has placed our government routinely in a crime corrupt driven banking profiteering military torture closed market place for the one percent condemned to fail and too big to avoid that failure.

America is big enough to fail and the media that is given the opportunity to help the American people understand the truth in the crimes that are being committed in real time. Yet, this opportunity given by public certification in a business license by the federal government related to the perfect sense of Da Vinci in that the practitioners need not only to study their own practice but to openly out those that confuse and cause chaos or worse push the public to crime. The media of today does not help solve crime, they perpetuate it

[leveymg]

13. There is great profit in chaos, and advantage to fear. Economic terrorism should be dealt with as

such.

[seveneyes]

12. "there are several thousand Islamist extremists here"

Perhaps attacking the root of the problem would be a better start than assigning blame to whistleblowers. Why would you allow "several thousand Islamist extremists" to reside in your home or let them come in to start with?