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MI5 Chief Seeks New Powers After Paris Magazine Attack
An anonymous reader writes with news that the head of MI5 is asking for more snooping powers following the attack at Charlie Hebdo. "The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has called for new powers to help fight Islamist extremism, warning of a dangerous imbalance between increasing numbers of terrorist plots against the UK and a drop in the capabilities of intelligence services to snoop on communications. Parker described the Paris attack as "a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm" and said he had spoken to his French counterparts to offer help. Speaking to an invited audience at MI5 headquarters, he said the threat level to Britain had worsened and Islamist extremist groups in Syria and Iraq were directly trying to orchestrate attacks on the UK. An attack on the UK was "highly likely" and MI5 could not give a guarantee it would be able to stop it, he said."
That's exactly the problem, they shouldn't be monitoring tens of millions in the first place because there aren't tens of millions that are a threat. My point exactly was that they only need to monitor the few hundred or few thousand that match real actual threat criteria.
The fact they're monitoring tens of millions is precisely the ineptitude that needs calling out and dealing with. There aren't tens of millions of real actual threats present within each country, there are a few hundred or maybe a few thousand at best. You don't need to monitor anyone abroad, that's the job of external security like MI6 and your foreign partners to do. MI5 can't keep track of internal threats precisely because they're too busy snooping and gathering mountains of data on non-threats.
As I've said before, instead of working on becoming better at finding the needle in the haystack, all MI5, GCHQ, and it's counterparts overseas seem to do now is build a bigger haystack so that even when their counterparts from overseas say to them "Hey, you've got a bunch of terrorist threats here" they seem to just respond "Sorry, too busy with head buried in massive haystack to care".
You know, the reason why radical islamists are so powerful in middle east today is mostly western intervention. Be it Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or the gulf states... The islam is not more or less barbaric than christianity, it is just that the wrong people are in power right now, just like the wrong people were in power in medieval christian Europe.
Mankind would be better off accepting that there is a fundamental problem about most religions (not faith, mind you. I am speaking of religions) and overcome it as a relic of the past.