Gestapo expand outside London

[TonyGosling]

MI5 expanding outside London
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7137315.stm

In the second part of a programme to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, security correspondent Gordon Corera examines how MI5 and the police are adapting to meet the [fictitious] terror threat.

Britain's security service MI5 is growing fast.

It will have doubled in size within a few months from where it stood on 9/11, but it is also moving out of London.

By 2011, it is expected to have 4,000 staff, of whom a quarter will be based in the regions as it opens eight new regional centres, as well as a new secret operations centre.

A central aspect of this expansion is closer co-operation with local police forces.

Greater Manchester was the first force to set up a counter-terrorist unit and it now works hand in glove with the security service.

"Actually you can't any more tell who's the cop, who's the spook. I think that's probably the test," explains Manchester Chief Constable Mike Todd.

Targets

"I have to say, when it comes to the sort of tasking, co-ordinating meetings every week between the police service nationally and the security service, there's no shortage of targets that we've got to deal with."

A tour around the unit by its head, Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter, reveals operations spread across a number of floors, with teams of analysts, surveillance officers and counter-terrorism officers working with local communities and officers on specific issues like prisons or terrorist funding.

Their aim is to generate investigative leads in-house as well as pursue leads that come from MI5 or other intelligence agencies.

The unit is also designed to work on community engagement and co-operation.


Our worst nightmare is intelligence coming in and getting lost in the system and then, after an attack, realising we had intelligence which hadn't been developed
Senior officer

"When you look at the link between the service and the police, it reaches literally from the director general of the security service, the chief constable, right the way down to a community police officer working in one of our communities," explains Ch Con Todd.

The police and MI5 also work closely together on a project called Rich Picture designed to spot early signs of suspicious activity within communities.

There are many motivations for this intimate co-operation, but one of the most important is the experience of 7 July, 2005.

In 2004, during an MI5 investigation into a group of men in south-east England, the man who would go on to be the ringleader of 7/7, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was photographed and followed to his home in West Yorkshire.

But he was never investigated further.

MI5 says there was no evidence at the time that he was likely to carry out an attack in the future, but one of the questions that has been asked is whether the communication between MI5 and West Yorkshire Police was close enough in this case, and whether the police were told of Khan and his links.

Mohammed Siddique Khan
Police and MI5 have learnt from the 7 July bombings

Since new details came to light, the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee has been investigating this subject for a second time, with a report due soon.

"We do know MI5 informed West Yorkshire Police," says the committee's chairman, Paul Murphy MP.

"What we are now doing in the committee is looking at the detail behind all that."

Senior police officers say that one of the lessons learns from that experience is not just the need for closer communication between police and MI5, but also the need to make sure that the police expand their counter-terrorist capability in line with that of the security service.

Otherwise, the danger will be that stockpiles of intelligence leads generated by MI5 start building up which the police do not have the capacity to follow up.

The great fear is "another MSK" as one counter-terrorist officer put it, referring to the 7/7 ringleader.

"Our worst nightmare is intelligence coming in and getting lost in the system and then, after an attack, realising we had intelligence which hadn't been developed," explained a senior officer.

Secret location

As well as the regional stations, MI5 is also in the process of building what it calls an "operations centre" outside of London.

While the regional stations focus on investigations, the operations centre will be designed to allow the rapid response of surveillance and other officers around the country in emergencies and on short notice.

The exact location is being kept secret.

But even with the growth and regionalisation, those at the front line say hard choices still have to be made about who to investigate and who to prioritise.

"You can never say that you have enough to meet a threat which is as broad and deep as this threat is," argues Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command and national co-ordinator for terrorist investigations.

"We make choices knowing that there is always the risk that it might be the wrong choice."

The Real Spooks - MI5 and Counter Terrorism since 9/11 continues on BBC Radio 4 on 11 December at 2000 GMT. It will be repeated on 16 December at 1700 GMT.

[Emmanuel]

I listened to this. All I can say, is that everyone is acting, and are hypnotised by the lies. The presenters, the expert intelligence officers, the police, and the writers who come up with this bull s.
It was saturated with fear fuelled words, like 'threat' and maybe I missed something but now, is it normal for Muslims collectively to be called "the community" There are many communities as far as I can see as well as one large one, the human race.
The BBC propaganda machine gets worse every time I hear it.
There were some lighthearted mentions of SAS officers and children becoming spies, but its actually not far from the truth of todays police state.

[QuitTheirClogs]

So what happens when these new recruits, conned by the official lies, start finding out the truth?

[TonyGosling]

Simple, they learn to keep their gobs and their minds shut fast or else they get the sack.

[Thermate911]

Emmanuel prompts me to ask:-

How many here think the film 'Children of Men' far-fetched?

Far too many, it would seem, judging by the general level of (induced) complacency one sees around us.

ISTM, the lemmings have one up on humanity; they don't finance their own destruction.

What's the going rate for a latent psychopath in MI5 these days?
.

[TonyGosling]

Unfortunately.
No.
Watch out for the language on this though

Link

[Annie]

[Emmanuel]

What the moral of this story?
Dont work for Satans little helpers even if pays the mortgage.
We appreciate it that you blew the whistle though Annie. Dont give up the fight.

Thanks for informing I didnt know PD James wrote Children of Men. I had an Auntie who used to read those and I thought they were a bit stuffy.
I was very moved by that film. Absoutley grotsque picture of the future. Elements of it already here and set in place.

Some discussion on the important themes or predictive programming in the film here:

Thematic and obvious PP elements:
No children are able to be born through all pervasive human infertility.
Fugitives are all over the place, as are civilian arrestees.
Full fledged police state, with the 'posse commitatus' rule nullified (military is used as police force).
Flash mob activity and terrorism abounds. It is mentioned that terroristic attacks are perpetrated by the government, this will promote fear for the government.
Society has seriously degenerated: living standards have gone down the drain (poverty is common place), schools are empty and deserted (at least in the rural area), overpopulation and immigration abounds, presence of military overseen refugee camps, chaotic and discordant populations.
Militant Islam is openly professed in Britain. This theatrical given helps to incite fear for Islam by the public.
Subtle and less obvious PP elements:
Elderly people are mostly senile and robbed of dignity, autonomy and quite unlike being custodians of wisdom accumulated over the years of their long life (which should be more or less the norm).
Subtle hints of medicine use being common place (imagery of pill strips are flashed by).
Hiding behind the unarmed civil population has zero effectiveness for 'terrorists' since both parties are shot to pieces by 'counter-terrorism' armed forces. This helps to stimulate the widening of the trust gap between resistive civil groups and passive compliant groups.