Edward Snowden files cracked by Russia and China, forcing British spies to abort missions

In the spotlight: Have Russia and China cracked the files leaked by Edward Snowden?

Russia and China have allegedly hacked the Edward Snowden files - forcing British spies to abort their missions overseas.
Government sources claim both countries have 'cracked' the encrypted documents stolen from the US National Security Agency in 2013, which revealed how Britain and the US spied on their own citizens.
It's said some documents could unmask British spies, something described as a "huge strategic setback" for the West by former GCHQ director Sir David Omand.

A Downing Street source told the Sunday Times: "We know Russia and China have access to Snowden's material and will be going through it for years to come, searching for clues to identify potential targets.
"Snowden has done incalculable damage. In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed."

Spooks: The GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

But the source did add there was "no evidence of anyone being harmed" as a result.
Snowden triggered a wave of controversy when he leaked tens of thousands of documents about surveillance programmes run by the NSA and foreign counterparts, including Britain's GCHQ, in 2013.
The programmes included NSA's Prism and GCHQ's Tempora, which both involve "hoovering up" vast volumes of private communications.
The documents were filtered before publication so they didn't compromise national security by The Guardian - whose editor was then forced by government agents to smash up a hard drive containing the data in the newspaper's basement.
Once Snowden's identity was revealed he fled from Hong Kong to Russia.
Now it's being claimed he may have had to help Russia in exchange for staying - with a source telling the newspaper: "Putin didn't give him asylum for nothing".

Reuters

Slammed: Theresa May should be stripped of snooping powers, a watchdog has said

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, suggested the documents could have still been secret if the US had treated him as a whistleblower and not a criminal.
She told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "This seems to be very much an intent to portray Snowden not as the whistleblower that some of us think of him as but as this terrible traitor.
"He did what many in the US [see as] a public service in revealing the sheer extent of mass surveillance."
A review in the wake of the Snowden revelations said the framework for how British spooks collect data was "undemocratic" and must be entirely rewritten.