How to share intelligence

Countries will tell their allies things they know – at least until one side blabs

A CCTV camera records as Border Force staff check lorries and trucks arriving at the UK border as they leave a cross-channel ferry that has just arrived from France. Matt Cardy / Getty Images

‘Loose lips sink ships” was the slogan on an American Second World War poster. The British version was: “Careless talk costs lives”. Both were warnings not to reveal too much information, because you never knew who was listening.

America’s president forgot that particular lesson when he revealed to Russian diplomats information about an ISIL plot to put bombs in laptops. Reporting has since suggested that the information came from Israel via an Arab country with a spy inside ISIL’s ranks. The revelation could have led the Russians to figure out details of the operation and, if that information were passed on to the Syrians, put the spy in danger. Sometimes you can share too much.

The same thing happened after the Manchester bombing, when British police passed on details to their American counterparts – which promptly ended up in the US media. So infuriated were the British that America’s secretary of state flew across the Atlantic to make a public apology.

Countries spy on other countries all the time, or they find out things that could be useful to their friends, and so they tell them. Those are the basics of intelligence sharing. But when it comes to terrorism and international crime, the stakes can be very high and a careless word can compromise years of work.

In the case of the Manchester bombing, the information was entered into a shared database, from which it was leaked. But sometimes the intelligence sharing goes further, with countries collaborating on processing information and data.

When Edward Snowden, a former contractor for the CIA, leaked details of extensive surveillance by the United States, even close allies were surprised. The US, it seemed, was not only spying on adversaries, but on close allies like Spain and Japan. They hacked into Israeli cockpit cameras. They tapped into Angela Merkel’s phone. So furious were the Germans that they started spying on the British and the Americans for the first time since the Second World War.

The US is part of a club of English-speaking countries called the Five Eyes, along with the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Five Eyes share huge amounts of intelligence and appear to be spying on everyone except each other.

Well, almost. Snowden’s revelations also highlighted that UK agencies were spying on US citizens and then passing that information to the US itself, to get around domestic laws on spying on citizens.

The root of all of this is trust. Countries share intelligence because they believe they have shared goals – even if temporarily – and pooling resources helps. But that only works if the countries with intelligence believe it will be treated with care. Few spy agencies will put their own people in harm’s way. So when it turns out those they are sharing the intelligence with can’t be trusted – whether it is a low-level bureaucrat or an elected politician – the result is that they stop sharing. Careless talk, it seems, can also cost friends.