Our enemies are stronger because of Edward Snowden’s treacherous betrayal

Modern-day code-breaking is immensely more challenging than it was in the Bletchley Park era during the Second World War, when the capture of German code books enabled British mathematicians such as Alan Turing to read vital enemy communications. Todays encryption software automatically encodes data, making it difficult to decipher without outside assistance. To this end most Western spy agencies have formed close working relationships with many of the worlds leading internet providers, helping them to monitor the communications of hostile governments and organisations. In the past, this close-knit relationship has enabled Western surveillance organisations such as the NSA and GCHQ to provide vital intelligence that has helped to disrupt al-Qaeda plots and support efforts by Nato forces to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as providing vital information about the military ambitions of emerging powers such as China and India.

But thanks to Snowden and his acolytes, our ability to maintain high-level surveillance on potential threats to our security has been severely affected.

For, during the few months he spent working at the NSAs Signals Intelligence Centre in Hawaii, Snowden did not simply confine himself to acquiring information on the agencys mass surveillance techniques, which attracted most of the headlines when the Guardian first published his revelations last year. Many of the 1.7 million documents that Snowden copied and stole relate to top-secret American spying operations on countries like Russia and China. They also, as US General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has testified, relate directly to Americas military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures. As one official familiar with Snowdens activities remarked, This is a treasure trove of material for any adversary of the West.

The alarming scope of the leaking operation, and the fact that he specifically targeted a large number of top secret US databases, has led some American commentators to conclude that he was engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power, with Russia and China identified as the most likely culprits. But even if Snowden was acting on his own initiative, it is safe to assume that, having claimed asylum in Russia, both the Kremlin and Beijing are now well-acquainted with the intricacies of Western intelligence-gathering, enabling them to amend their own operational activities accordingly.

British and American security officials are certainly working on that assumption, and have now been forced to embark on the massive task of recalibrating their intelligence operations, so that they no longer relate to the model provided by Snowden. British officials estimate it will cost tens of millions of pounds just to change GCHQs eavesdropping facilities.

In the meantime, hostile groups such as al-Qaeda have lost no time in exploiting the gap in our intelligence-gathering capabilities to strengthen their position, with all the implications that is likely to have for our own future security.

Certainly, if countries like Russia and China were to gain the advantage at our expense, or groups such as al-Qaeda launched a successful terror attack, then Snowdens treacherous betrayal might not seem to have been such a good idea after all.

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Our enemies are stronger because of Edward Snowden's treacherous betrayal