My fears over the Britons radicalised online, by MI5 chief
BRITAIN is facing an unprecedented terror threat, MI5 warned yesterday, as it revealed home-grown fanatics are ‘being radicalised to the point of violence within weeks’.
In an unprecedented interview, Director General Andrew Parker said people who had ‘been born and brought up here’ now viewed Britain as the ‘enemy’.
He revealed the Security Service and police had already stopped six mass casualty attacks this year.
But he said greater powers were needed to monitor social media, the internet and phone apps which Islamic State and others are using to ‘broadcast their message and incite and direct terrorism’ in the UK.
Mr Parker also warned the internet giants that they have an ‘ ethical responsibility’ to alert the security agencies to potential threats.
A Parliamentary inquiry into the 2013 murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby found one of the fanatics, Michael Adebowale, had discussed killing a soldier on Facebook with another extremist but neither MI5 or the police was alerted.
Mr Parker said: ‘There is a real question here about responsibility for those who carry this information. Some of the social media companies operate arrangements for their own purposes under their codes of practice, which cause them to close accounts sometimes because of what is carried.
‘There is then a question about why not come forward? If there is something that concerns terrorism, or child sex exploitation, or concerns some other appalling area of crime, why would the company not come forward?’
Mr Parker made his remarks to BBC Radio Four’s Today programme in the first ever live interview by a serving head of either MI5, MI6 or GCHQ.
It comes ahead of the publication of two pieces of Government l egislation – on combating extremism, and giving security officials greater powers to monitor communications data – that are likely t o prove hugely controversial.
Critics claimed it was the first salvo in the battle to revive the so-called snoopers’ charter.
But Mr Parker said it was a fact that new technologies were posing ever-greater challenges to his agency and the law had not kept pace. He insisted MI5 was not i nterested in ‘ browsing through the private lives’ of the general public and should work within a ‘transparent’ legal framework. The problems faced by the security agencies have been compounded by the US fugitive Edward Snowden – who stole and leaked details of secret intelligence gathering techniques used by Britain and the US.
His revelations, published in the Guardian, have led to fanati cs changing the way they communicate.
Mr Parker said the six plots foiled in the past year ‘is the highest number I can recall in my 32-year career, certainly the highest number since 9/11’. The agency has also helped to foil a further nine plots overseas. On the home- grown threat, he warned: ‘Most of the people who try to become involved in terrorism in this country are people who are born and brought up here, have come through our education system and have nonetheless concluded that their home country, the country of their birth, is their enemy.’
It has also been revealed that Whitehall officials are monitoring more than 300 Britons who have been to Syria to fight alongside IS and returned.
The investigatory powers legislation is expected to be published by Home Secretary Theresa May next month.
‘Unprecedented level of threat’
IN a chilling intervention, the head of MI5 yesterday warned that Britain is facing the greatest terrorist threat in its history – with home-grown fanatics ‘being radicalised to the point of violence within weeks’.
Andrew Parker did not disguise his dismay that young men who have been born and educated here should now view this country as an ‘enemy’ they wish to destroy.
Nor did he pull his punches over who is helping to disseminate the poison which is warping their minds: social media companies whose encrypted apps and chat rooms are used by Islamic State to ‘broadcast their message and incite and direct terrorism’ in the UK.
So what must be done to confront a challenge which grows greater by the day? As the Mail has repeatedly argued, the likes of Facebook and Twitter must do much more to help identify the fanatics and fulfil what Mr Parker calls their ‘ethical responsibility’ to keep us safe.
Muslim communities and universities – which the Prime Minister yesterday revealed had hosted 70 hate preachers in the past 12 months – must also take far greater steps to root out extremists.
Most controversially, security officials insist that, if terrorists are not to vanish off their radar altogether, further powers are needed to monitor internet and mobile phone use. Already, there are howls of protest from the self-styled liberal Left, which proclaimed Edward Snowden a hero for revealing the West’s existing intelligencegathering techniques.
Yet the bitter irony is that one of the main reasons why the new law is needed is to repair the damage that Snowden and his cheerleaders so egregiously caused by showing our enemies where to hide on the web.
The Mail has a proud history of defending individual freedoms from an overbearing State. But – unlike Snowden and his friends – we also recognise that the first duty of government is to protect its citizens from being murdered in their streets.