US looking into suspected new spy leak

07 August 2014 - 02:01 By Reuters
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NO SECRETS: Edward Snowden blew the whistle on spying
NO SECRETS: Edward Snowden blew the whistle on spying
Image: Sunday Times

US intelligence officers were considering opening a criminal investigation into the suspected leak of a classified counter-terrorism document to a website, an official said.

The intelligence officials were preparing a criminal referral over the publication on The Intercept website of the document.

The document provides a statistical breakdown of people with supposed connections to militants, the official said.

The document was published by the website The Intercept on Tuesday. Some reports speculate that a second leaker - besides former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden - had begun sending classified documents from inside the US intelligence to the media.

The "leak" involves information on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database (TIDE) and the Terrorist Screening Database, the document said.

The document claims that 680000 names are "watchlisted" and of this number, 280000 people are described as having "no recognised terrorist group affiliation".

Around the same number of people on the list have suspected connections to several militant groups, including al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the document said.

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