Britain faces unprecedented level of terror threat
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E-mail Xinhua, December 9, 2016
Britain faces an unprecedented level of threat from terrorism and warfare, the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Britain's top secret security agency, said in his first speech Thursday.
In what was a rare public appearance by a security chief, Alex Younger, known in the security services as "C", said: "As I speak, the highly organized, external attack-planning structures within Daesh (IS), even as they face military threat, are plotting ways to project violence against the UK and our allies without ever having to leave Syria."
Despite the unprecedented level of threat, from terrorism or hybrid warfare, Younger said his message was one of confidence. Many of the threats, he said, came from ungoverned spaces in Iraq and Syria.
Younger said at the meeting that British intelligence and security services had disrupted 12 terrorist plots since June 2013.
He said MI6 would "continue to give this country the edge and be an important reason why, in the face of an increasingly complex world, Britain can remain secure, prosperous and confident, in the future, just as it has been in the past."
Younger also paid tribute to the people he called "the brave men and women, officers and agents, who work at great personal risk to keep this country safe."
While recognizing MI6's "deserved reputation as one of the best intelligence services in the world", Younger acknowledged that this would only remain the case if MI6 evolved with the seismic shifts that the data age and globalism had caused."
A statement added: "Alongside the values that MI6 defends and which define its operations, it would be their "relationship with modern technologies that would determine their effectiveness in the future."
Younger's speech was given to an audience of journalists, driven in a fleet of vehicles to MI6's headquarters on the banks of the River Thames in London. It was the first time a serving chief had spoken publicity about the security service from within its own headquarters.
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