MI5's recently appointed boss has placed the ability to intercept communications at the centre of the security agency's counter-terrorism efforts. Andrew Parker's most detailed justification of the controversial surveillance programmes by GCHQ and the NSA, came in a pre-planned speech (transcript here) to the Royal United …

AnalysisEvil US Internet companies are shielding terrorists plotting our destruction! Woo! Evil Tory bastards are using the Woolwich Report as an excuse for a further crackdown on the Internet, muslims and ultra-left Guardian columnists.* Woo! Or, perhaps, neither of the above? All the shouting is based on the parliamentary …

The Home Office is seeking suppliers for a £20m contract for a "bespoke tracking and surveillance system" for all law enforcement agencies. The tender for surveillance, security systems and devices also includes software "to meet the specific and unique operational requirements of a covert surveillance systems." Suppliers …

Spooks and security agencies must openly debate the public's concerns over surveillance following the Snowden revelations, former head of MI5 and current thriller writer Stella Rimington has said. "It is not enough nowadays for intelligence services to say we have your best interests at heart," she told delegates at Microsoft' …

British agents spy on lawyers and their clients who are suing the UK government – and then pass their confidential conversations onto the government's legal team, it's claimed. Evidence of dirty tricks surfaced amid a court case brought against the British government by two Libyan families, who were kidnapped and sent back to …

Sir Iain Lobban's final speech as GCHQ director omitted any mention of that man Edward Snowden, and unlike recent speeches by FBI and law enforcement officials on both side of the Atlantic, the spy boss had no critical words for Apple and Google's plans to roll out improved encryption on smartphones and computers. Instead, an …

The detention and interrogation by British police of David Miranda, boyfriend of a journalist at the heart of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks furore, has been ruled to be legal by a British judge. Miranda was stopped at Heathrow airport and interrogated for almost nine hours last August under anti-terrorism legislation while in …

Spooks are still withholding the vital codebreaking secrets of Bletchley Park some 70 years after its boffins first cracked the Nazis' encrypted transmissions. Even though Bletchley has not been an active military facility for more half a century, GCHQ is still refusing to release algorithms which were used to decode Second …

QuotwThis was the week when billionaire Julian Robertson decided to dump all of his Apple stock because he read a biography of Steve Jobs and decided he didn't like him all that much. After perusing a bio of the late founder of the fruity firm, Robertson decided that Jobs wasn't a totally nice guy so he was going to sell off his …

MI5's newly appointed boss has suggested that his predecessor might have spoken too much about cyber-attacks rather than conventional terrorism in a speech attempting to justify controversial surveillance programs by GCHQ and the NSA. Andrew Parker, director general of the security service, made the remarks in a speech to the …

Spending ReviewAs George Osborne hacked away at what he saw as money-wasting thickets in Britain's welfare system during his spending review on Wednesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer - at the same time - upped the budget for the country's security services. Spooks at GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 will see a "real terms increase in funding ... to …

MI5 has reportedly abandoned a planned £90m upgrade to an intelligence database after the delayed IT project failed to meet its requirements. The record management system was supposed to be up to speed in time last year to tackle the threat of a terrorist attack on the London Olympics. Designed to collect intelligence data and …

British spook hive MI5 has taken the unusual step of placing a front-page warning on its website about a financial scam carried out by people pretending to be spies or the agency's director general. The online alert was prominently posted on mi5.gov.uk, and occupies more space than the UK security threat level indicator, which …

British intelligence nerve-centre MI5 is recruiting fluent Chinese speakers to eavesdrop on phone calls - but it got more than it bargained for when its Mandarin comprehension test was ridiculed by Redditors. Blighty's Security Service set up an online language exam, which encourages peeps with Mandarin, Russian, Sylheti, …

WikiLeaks' revelations of the “secrets” of global diplomacy weren't that secret, says Dame Stella Rimington, novelist and former Director general of MI5. Speaking in Australia, where she today delivered an address to the International Council on Archives conference , Rimington told The Reg that one of the issues public sector …

The Director General of MI5 said that both business and government was on the front line of cyber attacks – and that assaults by both criminal hackers and foreign governments had reached an industrial scale. Delivering Lord Mayor’s Annual Defence and Security Lecture in London last night, Jonathan Evans revealed that MI5 is …

A laptop belonging to the former boss of MI5 has been nicked while she was passing through Heathrow Airport. Dame Stella Rimington's computer was swiped after she left the machine on a luggage trolley at Heathrow airport last Tuesday, The Sun reports. There's no evidence the theft was anything more than opportunistic. Even so …

Blighty's intelligence agency MI5 forgot to replace the expired digital certificate for its website over the weekend. The schoolboy error meant anybody trying to securely access the Security Service's site - perhaps to report suspected terrorist activity - would have been warned by their browser that the connection was …