Andrew Parker was named as the new head of the
Security Service earlier this year.
Thousands of Islamist extremists in the UK see
the British public as a legitimate target for
attacks, the director general of MI5 has warned.
Andrew Parker was making his first public speech since
taking over as head of the UK Security Service in April.
Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan and Yemen
present "the most direct and immediate threats to the
UK," he said.
He also warned of the damage done to British security
by the leaking of classified documents from GCHQ.
Addressing the Royal United Services Institute in
Whitehall, Mr Parker added the security services must
have access to the many means of communication
which terrorists now use.
'Not perfect'
Threats to the UK are growing more diverse and
diffuse, he said, but warned: "It remains the case that
there are several thousand Islamist extremists here who
see the British public as a legitimate target."
He explained that "knowing of an individual does not
equate to knowing everything about them".
"Being on our radar does not necessarily mean being
under our microscope," he said.
"The reality of intelligence work in practice is that we
only focus the most intense intrusive attention on a
small number of cases at any one time.
"The challenge therefore concerns making choices
between multiple and competing demands to give us
the best chance of being in the right place at the right
time to prevent terrorism."
Mr Parker added: "We are not perfect, and there are
always things we can learn, do better and sharpen up
on."
With 30 years in MI5, Mr Parker was previously deputy
director general and before that director of its counter-
terrorism division at the time of the London bombings
in 2005.
'Stopped at airports'
In his speech, he named al-Qaeda and its affiliates in
south Asia and the Arabian peninsula as presenting "the
most direct and immediate threats to the UK".
By that he meant primarily its elements in Pakistan and
separately in Yemen, from where al-Qaeda has three
times succeeded in smuggling explosives past security
on to planes in the last four years.
Referring to the ongoing conflict in Syria, he said a
growing proportion of MI5's casework concerned
individuals from the UK who had travelled to fight
there.
He said extremist Sunni groups in Syria were aspiring to
attack Western countries.
This has long been a concern of Western governments -
that British-based jihadists will one day return from the
killing fields of Syria and turn their new-found skills on
the population back home.
A number of people have been stopped at airports and
some have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism.
"For the future, there is good reason to be concerned
about Syria," he said.
Mr Parker said 330 people had been convicted of
terrorism-related offences in Britain between 11
September 2001 and 31 March 2013.
He added that in the first few months of this year,
there had been four major trials related to terrorist
plots.
Chillingly, he reminded the public that these included
plans for a 7/7-style attack with rucksack bombs, and
named two other plots.
There were guilty pleas in each case, he said, with 24
terrorists convicted and sentenced to more than 260
years in jail.
'Reach and limits'
Mr Parker's speech also went on to reveal some of the
fears and frustrations his service was experiencing over
both the advances in technology and those who leak
government secrets into the public domain.
He warned that terrorists now had tens of thousands of
means of communication "through e-mail, IP
telephony, in-game communication, social networking,
chat rooms, anonymising services and a myriad of
mobile apps".
Mr Parker said it was vital for MI5 - and by inference its
partner GCHQ - to retain the capability to access such
information if the Security Service was to protect the
country.
Intelligence officials in both the US and Britain have
been absolutely dismayed at the wealth of secret data
taken by the former CIA contractor Edward Snowden
when he fled to Russia.
Some 58,000 of the files are from GCHQ, whose
intelligence, Mr Parker said, had played a vital role in
stopping many UK terrorist plots over the past decade.
Without mentioning Mr Snowden by name, he said ''it
causes enormous damage to make public the reach and
limits of GCHQ techniques".
Doing this, he added, handed the advantage to the
terrorists.
In conclusion, Mr Parker said he did not believe the
terrorist threat was any worse now than before. But it
was "more diffuse, more complicated, more
unpredictable".
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