Downing Street and the Home Office are being challenged to answer in public claims that Russia and China have broken into the secret cache of Edward Snowden files and that British agents have had to be withdrawn from live operations as a consequence.



The reports first appeared in the Sunday Times, which quoted anonymous senior officials in No 10, the Home Office and security services. The BBC also quoted an anonymous senior government source, who said agents had to be moved because Moscow gained access to classified information that reveals how they operate.

Privacy campaigners questioned the timing of the report, coming days after a 373-page report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, which was commissioned by David Cameron. Anderson was highly critical of the existing system of oversight of the surveillance agencies and set out a series of recommendations for reform.



A new surveillance bill, scheduled for the autumn, is expected to be the subject of fierce debate.



Responding to the Sunday Times, David Davis, the Conservative MP who is one of the leading campaigners for privacy, said: “We have to treat all of these things with a pinch of salt.” He said the use of an anonymous source to create scare stories was a typical tactic and the timing was comfortable for the government.



“You can see they have been made nervous by Anderson. We have not been given any facts, just assertions,” he said.



Anderson recommended that approval of surveillance warrants be shifted from the home and foreign secretaries to a new judicial body made up of serving and retired judges, which Davis supports but towards which the government appears to be lukewarm.



Davis said there was little point in raising the Sunday Times allegations in the Commons as the government would say it does not comment on intelligence matters. Davis’s prediction was prescient. A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We don’t comment on leaks.” The intelligence agencies said: “Our longstanding policy is not to comment on intelligence matters.”

But Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International, echoed Davis, saying: “Looking at the Sunday Times, it asks more questions than it answers.” He added that if Downing Street and the Home Office believed that Russia and China had gained access to the Snowden documents, then why was the government not putting this out through official channels.



He added: “Given Snowden is facing espionage charges in the US, you would have thought the British government would have provided them with this information.”



Snowden, a former NSA contractor, handed over tens of thousands of leaked documents to the Guardian in Hong Kong two years ago. He left Hong Kong with flights booked to Latin America but was stopped in Russia when the US revoked his passport, and has been living in Moscow in exile since.



He has repeatedly said he handed over all the documents to journalists in Hong Kong and no longer has access to them, making it impossible for either China or Russia to get to them through him. The Sunday Times and BBC do not say where China or Russia allegedly gained access to the files.



Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “Last week, David Anderson’s thoughtful report called for urgent reform of snooping laws. That would not have been possible without Snowden’s revelations. Days later, an ‘unnamed Home Office source’ is accusing him of having blood on his hands. The timing of this exclusive story from the securocrats seems extremely convenient.”

Andrew Mitchell, a former cabinet minister, said he was sure the Sunday Times got story because of the Anderson report. He added: “I think we have to be very careful of the argument ‘listen sonny, we know what you don’t know and therefore you should do what we say’. That is not a good argument; we need to have a proper debate about all of this.”

“I don’t approve of what Snowden did, but I have to say having been to Washington recently that there has been a massive change of view in the United States, not just people like Rand Paul and so on, there’s a massive change of view about the debate and that has resulted from Snowden, whether you like it or not.”

The White House said it had no comment on the UK government claims.

Since the initial revelations about the extent of the bulk collection of communications data and the relationship between the intelligence agencies and internet companies, the US and British governments – and their intelligence agencies – have made a series of assertions that have subsequently been retracted.



Snowden was initially said to be a Chinese or Russian spy, but the US has since said this is not true. The US has also backtracked on claims that surveillance helped stop 56 plots and that Snowden had “blood on his hands”.



The British government and intelligence agencies in both countries issued warnings as far back as at least 18 months ago that the Snowden disclosures had helped terrorists, costing GCHQ, the UK’s main surveillance agency, up to 30% of its capabilities and that agents had had to be moved.



But privacy campaigners countered that no evidence had ever been provided to back up these assertions and that Snowden had done a public service by revealing the extent of illegal mass surveillance.



The allegations being made 18 months ago have now resurfaced in the Sunday Times. The paper quoted a source saying: “Agents have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped us getting vital information.” The source said they had no evidence that anyone had been harmed.

A “senior Home Office source” was also quoted by the newspaper, saying: “Putin didn’t give him asylum for nothing. His documents were encrypted but they weren’t completely secure and we have now seen our agents and assets being targeted.”



The Sunday Times also quoted a “British intelligence source” saying that Russian and Chinese officials would be examining Snowden’s material for “years to come”.

“Snowden has done incalculable damage,” the intelligence source reportedly said. “In some cases the agencies have been forced to intervene and lift their agents from operations to prevent them from being identified and killed.”



