The Security Service, also known as MI5, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests and to counter terrorism and espionage within the United Kingdom (UK).
Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or other intelligence activities conducted by, for, or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is the national and principal federal law enforcement agency of the Australian Government with the unique role of investigating crime and protecting the national security of the Commonwealth of Australia. The AFP is an independent agency of the Attorney-General's Department and is responsible to the Attorney-General and accountable to the Parliament of Australia. As of October 2019 the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police is Reece Kershaw, formerly the Northern Territory Police Commissioner.
The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service is New Zealand's primary national intelligence agency. It is responsible for providing information and advising on matters including national security and foreign intelligence. It is headquartered in Wellington and overseen by a Director-General, the Minister of New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, and the parliamentary intelligence and security committee; independent oversight is provided by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Elizabeth Lydia Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller, is a retired British intelligence officer. She worked as a teacher for three years before joining MI5, the British internal Security Service. She led the newly created Irish counter-terrorism section from 1992 and then became director in charge of surveillance and technical operations. She became Director General of MI5 in October 2002 and, in that capacity, led the Security Service's response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Following her retirement in April 2007, she became a crossbench life peer in 2008.
The Counterterrorism Division (CTD) is a division of the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. CTD investigates terrorist threats inside the United States, provides information on terrorists outside the country, and tracks known terrorists worldwide. In the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, CTD's funding and manpower have significantly increased.
Terrorism and mass attacks in Canada includes acts of terrorism, as well as mass shootings, vehicle-ramming attacks, mass stabbings, and other such acts committed in Canada that people may associate with terroristic tactics but have not been classified as terrorism by the Canadian legal system.
The Anti-Terrorist Branch was a Specialist Operations (SO) branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service, formed to respond to terrorist activities within the capital and the surrounding areas.
The Specialist Operations directorate is a unit of the Metropolitan Police in London, England. It is responsible for providing specialist policing capabilities, including national security and counter-terrorism operations. The Specialist Operations directorate is currently led by Assistant Commissioner Matt Jukes.
There are six known secret anti terrorist policies of the Metropolitan Police. They are Operations Clydesdale, Rainbow, Kratos, Trammel, Camion and Lightning. None of them have had the operational details formally disclosed, and as a result, little information is known on these.
The Australian Intelligence Community (AIC) and the National Intelligence Community (NIC) or National Security Community of the Australian Government are the collectives of statutory intelligence agencies, policy departments, and other government agencies concerned with protecting and advancing the national security and national interests of the Commonwealth of Australia. The intelligence and security agencies of the Australian Government have evolved since the Second World War and the Cold War and saw transformation and expansion during the Global War on Terrorism with military deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and against ISIS in Syria. Key international and national security issues for the Australian Intelligence Community include terrorism and violent extremism, cybersecurity, transnational crime, the rise of China, and Pacific regional security.
The Special Detective Unit (SDU) is the main domestic security agency of the Garda Síochána, the national police force of Ireland, under the aegis of the Crime & Security Branch (CSB). It is the primary counter-terrorism and counter-espionage investigative unit within the state. The Special Detective Unit superseded the Special Branch, which itself replaced the older Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which was founded in 1921. They work in conjunction with the Defence Forces Directorate of Military Intelligence (J2) – Ireland's national intelligence service – on internal matters. The unit's headquarters are in Harcourt Street, Dublin City.
The counter-terrorism page primarily deals with special police or military organizations that carry out arrest or direct combat with terrorists. This page deals with the other aspects of counter-terrorism:
Terrorism in the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office, poses a significant threat to the state. There have been various causes of terrorism in the UK. Before the 2000s, most attacks were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the late 20th century there were also attacks by Islamic terrorist groups. Since 1970, there have been at least 3,395 terrorist-related deaths in the UK, the highest in western Europe. The vast majority of the deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and happened in Northern Ireland. In mainland Great Britain, there were 430 terrorist-related deaths between 1971 and 2001. Of these, 125 deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, and 305 deaths were linked to other causes, including 270 in the Lockerbie bombing. Since 2001, there have been almost 100 terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain.
CONTEST is the United Kingdom's counter-terrorism strategy, first developed by Sir David Omand and the Home Office in early 2003 as the immediate response to 9/11, and a revised version was made public in 2006. Further revisions were published on 24 March 2009, 11 July 2011 and June 2018. An Annual Report on the implementation of CONTEST was released in March 2010 and in April 2014. The aim of the strategy is "to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence." The success of this strategy is not linked to total elimination of the terrorist threat, but to reducing the threat sufficiently to allow the citizens a normal life free from fear.
The Terrorist Hunters is a controversial non-fiction book by former senior police officer Andy Hayman, co-written by Margaret Gilmore, about Hayman's role as head of the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Operations Division. The Attorney General for England and Wales, Baroness Scotland QC, sought, and initially won, a High Court injunction against the publication of the book. The book was reported to have sold 2,500 pre-order copies before the injunction was issued.
The National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit is a national police unit of the National Police Chiefs' Council within the Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Operations Group.
Counter Terrorism Policing is the national collaboration of police forces working to prevent, deter, and investigate terrorism in the United Kingdom.
On 15 September 2017, at around 08:20 BST, an explosion occurred on a District line train at Parsons Green Underground station, in London, England. Thirty people were treated in hospital or an urgent care centre, mostly for burn injuries, by a botched, crude "bucket bomb" with a timer containing the explosive chemical TATP. Police arrested the main suspect, 18-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan, in a departure area of the Port of Dover the next day, and subsequently raided several addresses, including the foster home of an elderly couple in Sunbury-on-Thames where Hassan lived following his arrival in the United Kingdom two years earlier claiming to be an asylum seeker.
Special Branch was a unit in the Metropolitan Police in London, formed as a counter-terrorism unit in 1883 and merged with another unit to form Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) in 2006. It maintained contact with the Security Service (MI5) and had responsibility for, among other things, personal protection of (non-royal) VIPs and performing the role of examining officer at designated ports and airports, as prescribed by the Terrorism Act 2000.
