Britain has more terror suspects than it can track

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5 (is life following the more recent James Bond movies, with a female “M”?), says that her domestic spy agency is tracking over 1,600 suspects from 200 groups, who are currently plotting 30 different terrorist attacks.

The story, from Agence France Press (AFP), continues:

Some experts believe the security forces could struggle to keep pace with the growing number of people being radicalised. [LA: I think the reporter meant to say “would have to struggle.”]

MI5 has 2,800 staff but by 2008, it will be twice the size it was before the September 2001 attacks on the United States. [LA: Excuse me, but without knowing how large the staff was in 2001, we have no way of knowing what twice that number will be.]

Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University, said the police and security services were “stretched to near breaking point”.

“I do not think she is hyping the problem at all. It squares with what we know from recent trials and police statements,” he said.

“It takes about 20 officers to provide really close, in-depth surveillance on just one person.

“You can imagine the strain on resources if you take that and multiply it by the numbers she quoted.”

Well, yes, if you have literally thousands of active terror suspects, you have going to need many thousands of intelligence agents to “keep track” of them. You can’t keep this up forever, especially as the number of possible terrorists will probably continue to increase. Why not solve the problem by deporting from Britain all persons with terrorist ties? Nah. Liberal society doesn’t want to solve the terrorist problem, it just wants to manage it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 11, 2006 02:44 PM | Send