Telegraph | GCHQ has lost track of some of the most dangerous crime lords and has had to abort surveillance on others after Edward Snowden revealed their tactics, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The spy agency has suffered “significant” damage in its ability to monitor and capture serious organised criminals following the exposes by the former CIA contractor.
Intelligence officers are now blind to more than a quarter of the activities of the UK’s most harmful crime gangs after they changed their communications methods in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
One major drug smuggling gang has been able to continue flooding the UK with Class A narcotics unimpeded for the last year after changing their operations.
More intense tracking of others has either been abandoned or not started because of fears the tactics are now too easy to spot and will force the criminals to “go dark” and be lost sight of completely.
Communication companies are also hampering the efforts of GCHQ by refusing to hand over evidence on the likes of drug smugglers or fraudsters because they do not pose a “direct threat to life”.
Spy bosses had already warned that the Snowden leaks, revealed in a series of articles published by the Guardian newspaper, had seriously affected their efforts to track terrorists.
But the Daily Telegraph can reveal the scale of the harm it has also done to GCHQ’s other duty – to combat serious and organised crime
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