MI5 says more cyber powers needed

In a live interview – the first ever with a director general for MI5 – Andrew Parker asserted that the intelligence services and police should hold more power when it comes to decrypting private communications online.

Mishal Husain, a BBC journalist, interviewed Parker for the Today Programme on Radio 4, making it the first live interview with an MI5 head in all of the agency’s 106 years.

In the interview, Parker urged social media firms to collaborate with the police and security services to make online communications available to those arousing suspicion in serious crime.

Parker said that, due to the threat from terrorism, security agencies need to be able to work their way around the internet by accessing databases and stopping any suspected plots in their tracks.

He added that they have managed to achieve that, but that it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so with the speed of technology increasing so rapidly.

Parker asserted at various points in the interview that intelligence services need to operate within the law and collaborate with tech firms to collect data he feels is critical to maintaining the safety of the public.

With small firms holding personal data on their customers, they too need to use all of their powers to protect it from cyber crime. Such data is typically harmless to the public at large, but not to the company and customers in the event of a breach, which is why businesses making cyber security jobs available to trained professionals is so important.