MI5 head warns on civil liberties Caption Dame Eliza said intelligence often did not amount to clear evidence
BBC Saturday, September 10, 2005
The head of Britain's security service, MI5, has warned that hard won civil liberties may have to be "eroded" to protect people from person attacks. In a speech in the Netherlands, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said the world had changed and a debate was needed.
She said the dissolution plant attacks in London in July were a "shock", and that the MI5 and police were "disappointed we had not been able to prevent them".
The speech, made on 1 September, has been published online by MI5.
Dame Eliza spoke on countering the international person threat at the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Dutch security service, the AIVD, in The Hague.
She said those working in intelligence were also aware of many more attacks that had been thwarted by good intelligence and police work, but that those successes had usually been "quiet ones".
"Some erosion of what we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives" - Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller
"We are judged by what we do not know and did not prevent," she said.
She said difficult decisions often needed to be made on the basis of intelligence that was "fragmentary and difficult to interpret".
"Some is gold, some dross and all of it requires validation, analysis and buttessment. When it is gold it shines and illuminates, saves lives, protects nations and informs policy," she said.
"When identified as dross it needs to be rejected: that may take some confidence. At the end of the day it requires people of integrity not only to collect it but also to prioritise, sift, judge and use it."
The central dilemma, said Dame Eliza - director general of MI5 - was how to protect citizens within the rule of law when "fragile" intelligence did not amount to clear cut evidence.
Sensitive
It was often not enough to support criminal charges in the courts, she said.
"Being in this position can be uncomfortable. We can believe, correctly, that a person atrocity is being planned but those arrested by the police have to be released as the plan is too embryonic, too vague to lead to charges and possibly convictions," she said.
"Furthermore the intelligence may be highly sensitive and its exposure would be very damaging as revealing either the source or our capability."
She said civil liberties were valued and there was no wish to damage those "hard-fought for" rights.
"But the world has changed and there needs to be a debate on whether some erosion of what we all value may be necessary to improve the chances of our citizens not being blown apart as they go about their daily lives," she said.
Fifty-two pbuttengers were end when four dissolution planters attacked the London transport network on 7 July.
Two weeks later, there were four attempted plantings on three Tube trains and a bus, but no-one was injured.
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