UK border security is stepped up
SECURITY has been stepped up at UK borders, ports and railway stations in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
Inspections have increased at checkpoints the UK operates at the Eurostar terminal in Paris, ministers said, where tens of thousands of people a day catch trains through the Channel Tunnel.
Meanwhile more cars and lorries are also being searched on cross-Channel routes.
London commuters have been urged to be vigilant, but Downing Street said there was no intelligence of a specific potential attack and the overall threat level had not been raised from ‘ severe’ – the second highest – where it has been since August last year.
A government spokesman said: ‘On a precautionary basis we have tightened up border security.’
Police patrols, including by specialist armed officers, were bolstered at St Pancras international
‘A reassuring, armed presence’
railway station, the Eurostar terminal in London.
British Transport Police said patrols were continuing as ‘routine’ at London’s other 11 major – or ‘hub’ – stations, including Euston, Waterloo and Paddington, with armed officers at the busiest.
Armed police patrolled in groups of four, rather than the usual two, at St Pancras. The officers, armed to the teeth with sophisticated weaponry, patrolled the station, each carrying Heckler and Koch G36C semi-automatic rifles and Glock17 9mm pistols and a Taser stun gun.
British Transport Police said: ‘We want to provide a reassuring, visible armed presence to deter terrorism on the rail network.’
The heightened security came as the head of MI5 last night warned that terrorists are exploiting concerns about privacy to build an online ‘wall’ which they can operate behind without fear of detection.
Internet firms have become less willing to co-operate with the security services since the fugitive CIA officer Edward Snowden revealed the West’s intelligence gathering secrets. Privacy campaigners leapt on the disclosures to demand curbs on the material spies can access.
Last night MI5 director-general Andrew Parker hit back: ‘We all value our privacy. But I don’t want a situation where that privacy is so absolute and sacrosanct that terrorists and others who mean us harm can confidently operate from behind those walls without fear of detection.’
Mr Parker said his ‘sharpest concern’ as head of MI5 is the ‘growing gap between the threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it’. Officials say that, since Snowden, terrorists have changed the way they behave in order to avoid detection.
Mr Parker said: ‘The dark places from where those who wish us harm can plot and plan are increasing. We need to be able to access communications and obtain relevant data on those people when we have good reason to do so.’