Sir David said Snowden’s actions eclipsed the exploits of the Cambridge spy ring, whose five members leaked information to the Soviet Union during the Second World War and Cold War. Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies would have hacked into Snowden’s computers and copied the material he had taken from the US, he added.
It’s the most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever, much worse than Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean in the Fifties, Sir David told The Times. The comments are part of a conservative backlash against Snowden and the Guardian which published them. The Times is a conservative establishment newspaper and the Home Office’s Theresa May was under pressure to ensure a full investigation is carried out into whether the Guardian broke the law over its GCHQ leaks.
The idea is that it does not matter if the spooks were spying on you illegally, if you talk about it you are putting their lives in danger.