U.S. and British spies have been compromised now that Russia and China have allegedly decoded secret documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, high-level anonymous sources told the Sunday Times.
The British MI6 are actively pulling agents from key spots now that “hostile countries” have gained access to information potentially identifying them, government officials confirmed to the newspaper.
British officials are being called on to answer in public for the report, due to what some see as suspicious timing. The revelation comes just days after an independent review was highly critical of surveillance agencies.
Moscow has gained access to more than 1 million classified files and China has also cracked secret documents containing identifying information about western spies, the Sunday Times said.
The documents were gained through Snowden, who engineered one of the biggest leaks in U.S. history when he provided details of extensive Internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence to the media. Snowden is now living in Russia, after fleeing the U.S. in 2013.
Thought to have downloaded some 1.7 million documents from U.S. government computers, Snowden said he took whistleblower actions out of a desire to protect citizens’ privacy and basic liberties.
Snowden claimed at the time that no intelligence agencies, including China, had the capacity to decode the documents, amid concerns by government officials that leaked documents could end up in the wrong hands.
“No intelligence service — not even our own — has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect,” Snowden wrote to a senator in July 2013. “While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China).”
