U.K. Agency Makes Gains in Terror War; Can It Work Here? describes the UK’s Security Service, or MI5:
The Security Service, where spy novelist John LeCarre once worked, traces its history to 1909, when the government responded to a wave of public hysteria over a supposed influx of German spies. The new intelligence service soon split itself in two, one part handling domestic intelligence, the other gathering intelligence abroad. When the two agencies for a time were placed under the defense ministry, they acquired their familiar names, for ‘Military Intelligence’ divisions 5 and 6. MI6 was the fictional employer of Ian Fleming’s James Bond.Until recently MI5 had a staff of 2,100. Worries about Islamic terrorism prompted the government to fund an expansion expected to bring the total to about 3,100.
According to public records and accounts by former agents, MI5′s ‘A’ branch encompasses teams skilled at breaking into homes and offices without leaving a trace, to plant bugs, hidden cameras and copy computer disks. It includes specialists in lock picking, safe cracking and covert photography, as well as ‘watchers’ — highly trained teams adept at following people surreptitiously and maintaining surveillance.
Unlike our FBI, the UK’s MI5 is not a police organization:
In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and scathing reviews of U.S. intelligence-gathering, some security experts have held out MI5 as a model for the U.S. Not bound by strict rules of evidence required for law-enforcement agencies to make cases that would stand up in court, MI5 can focus on infiltration and intelligence gathering. It can thus concentrate on preventing potential mayhem rather than gathering evidence after the fact.Honing its skills in its long battle with the Irish Republican Army, MI5 has proved strong in areas where U.S. intelligence has struggled: developing human sources able to infiltrate terrorist organizations, winning cooperation from moderate elements in Muslim communities and sharing information more effectively with other agencies.
An MI5 success:
In March, the agency unearthed a plot and, with the help of police, arrested eight Pakistanis, who have been charged with obtaining half a ton of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer and hiding it in a self-storage locker near Heathrow Airport, according to press accounts and British terrorism experts. They allegedly planned to turn it into a large bomb.Using techniques learned during MI5′s battle with the IRA, MI5 officers secretly entered the locker and chemically neutralized the fertilizer so that it wouldn’t work in a bomb. This let investigators continue surveillance of the group, without risk that the material could be used in an attack.
Another success:
In January 2003, for example, U.K. police raided a modest apartment above a pharmacy in the North London neighborhood of Wood Green. In the apartment, they found traces of the deadly poison ricin and equipment used in making it, according to press reports at the time.Within days, at least 10 Algerian nationals, including the occupants of the apartment, were arrested under Britain’s terrorism laws. It emerged in press reports that the operation had resulted from MI5 surveillance. Tipped that members of the group had links to violent extremist elements, the Security Service traced them to the apartment. After secretly bugging it, agents learned of the efforts to make the poison, derived from castor beans, for use in an attack, possibly on a British military base.
Of course, all this success comes at a price in civil liberties and privacy.