Spy Chiefs: Terrorists 'Rubbing Hands In Glee'

Leaks by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden will have terrorists "rubbing their hands with glee", Britain's spy chiefs have said.

Giving evidence for the first time at a televised parliamentary committee hearing, the heads of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ said the revelations had already put operations at risk and that al Qaeda would be "lapping [them] up".

Sir John Sawers, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), said that the terrorists would be "rubbing their hands with glee" at the level of information put in the public domain.

The director of GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, said that there were clear signs that since the leaks terrorists had taken action to hide their methods of communication.

He said that terror groups in the Middle East had discussed the information disclosed by Snowden in specific terms.

:: How the committee hearing unfolded

Snowden disclosed that the UK was monitoring communications on a vast scale and that intelligence agencies were able to "listen" to the internet communications of millions of ordinary people through the GCHQ's Tempora programme.

But Sir Iain said that Britain's spies "do not spend our time listening to the telephone calls or reading the emails of the majority".

He said that terrorists did not have a particular method of communication - so they needed to gather a vast amount of information, which was combed for snippets of information that might prove useful.

However, he said that for them to do so "specific legal requirements have to be met".

He said that those who worked for him were not the kind of people who would "snoop" on the public but rather were committed to their jobs.

Speaking alongside Sir Iain and Sir John was the director general of the Security Service MI5, Andrew Parker, who denied that the work he was doing was compromising the freedom and democracy of Britons.

He said that the Security Service had disrupted 34 plots since 2005 with one or two major plots each year.

Most of the plots were conspiracies by people living in Britain and there were several thousand violent extremists operating in the country, he said.

However, Mr Parker denied that there had been a shift from big spectacular attacks, such as 9/11 or 7/7, towards lone-wolf attacks saying: "mass casualty attacks are very much in the minds of terrorists still."

Although he said that there had been a rise in the number of plots by single people and that this was due to the rise of the internet.

He said the phrase "home-grown terrorists" was not helpful because in all cases those who had carried out or plotted attacks had links with al Qaeda-affiliated groups in other countries.

He said "terrorist tourism" - which sees British nationals travel abroad for terror training before returning to the UK to plot attacks - is "a very important strand" of the threat faced by Britain.

The civil war in Syria has been a magnet for hundreds of British nationals looking for the opportunity for "jihadi" activity, many of whom have come into contact with al Qaeda-supporting groups before returning to the UK, he said.

Sir John Sawers said that threats to the UK had changed significantly since the Cold War.

He said: "It is not like it was in the Cold War. There are not states out there trying to destroy our Government and way of life."

He said that the biggest threat to the UK now was terrorism, mainly from al Qaeda. Second was from other states carrying out cyber espionage or amassing nuclear weapons.

Sir John said that it did not work like a James Bond film and agents were not just sent off.

Security chiefs have given evidence for many years in private but this was the first time they have done so in a televised appearance.

The three agencies are funded by £2bn of taxpayers' money, which accounts for 6% of the total defence budget.

A Guardian News and Media spokesperson said: "We welcome the fact that the intelligence chiefs acknowledged that they need to be more open as a result of the Snowden disclosures.

"But we were surprised that unlike in the US and Europe there was no substantive discussion at all about anything Snowden revealed.

"The disastrous loss of classified data was not the responsibility of journalists but of the intelligence community itself. It is only the involvement of global newspapers that prevented this information from spilling out across the web and genuinely causing a catastrophic leak.

"We understand that the agencies will always warn that any form of disclosure has a damaging impact on their work - but this cannot mean the end of all questioning and debate."