MI-5

====MI5, or The Security Service, is the domestic counter-intelligence and security agency of the United Kingdom. (The United Kingdom includes: Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.) MI5 stands for “Military Intelligence Sector 5”. It is not to get confused with MI6, or The Secret Intelligence Service, which is the United Kingdom’s foreign intelligence agency. To compare the MI5 and MI6 agencies, they are similar to the United States FBI and CIA. The main responsibility of MI5 is “protecting the UK against threats to its national security”. Examples of these threats could be terrorism, espionage, or actions meant to “overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial, or violent means”. The main concern of MI5 is the internal security of the UK, but it does cooperate and work with MI6 for overseas assignments.====

= History = ====First starting as the Secret Service Bureau in 1909, MI5 and MI6 soon broke off into different services. MI5 was founded by Major General Vernon Kell and started by gaining intelligence on Imperial Germany’s intelligence agents at the start of World War I in the UK.==== ====After WWI the size of MI5 decreased dramatically due to post-war budget cuts. MI5 was almost shut down but then in the 1930’s it had many assignments that had to do with communists and fascists. A few years later they spent time gaining intelligence on Nazi Germany. MI5 also played important roles during WWII and the Cold War. Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001, MI5 has changed the way they operate.====

= Location = ====MI5 has its national headquarters at the Thames House at the corner of Millbank and Horseferry Road in central London. The Thames House has been MI5’s headquarters since 1995. The official address of the headquarters is Thames House, 18 Park St, London SE1 9EQ, UK. For security purposes, they do not offer public tours of the Thames House.====

= Facts About the MI5 Staff =

Demographics of The Security Service Staff:

 * ====40% are Female====
 * ====60% are Male====
 * ====55% are under the age of 40====
 * ====8% are from black and ethnic minority backgrounds====
 * ====3% have a disability====

Job Posting Departments Include:

 * ====Investigative====
 * ====Surveillance====
 * ====Language Unit====
 * ====IT and Information Specialists====
 * ====Corporate Services====

= Director General = ====The leader of MI5 is called the Director General. The current Director General is Andrew Parker, who took his post in 2013. Parker is the seventeenth Director since the post was created in 1909. The Prime Minister appointed the Director General in secret until 1993. Their names and roles were not told to the general public. The Director General is responsible for overseeing many things including: making an annual report on the work of MI5 to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, making certain that the Security Service is politically impartial, ensuring that the Security Service obtains and discloses information only in accordance to the Security Services responsibilities, and is responsible for the operations and efficiency of the Security Service.==== = Former Directors General: = > ======== = Careers = As said before the main departments in MI5 include Investigative, Surveillance, Language Unit, IT and Information Specialists, and Corporate Services. Think you have what it takes to work for The Security Service? The officials at MI5 created an "Investigative Challenge" and a "Listening Challenge" on their official website to recruit potential MI5 applicants and to show more realistically what an MI5 officer deals with on a daily basis. The investigative challenge takes 15 minutes and is said to test your analytical skills and your use of information. 10 minutes are used to read through documents on a made up case. The rest of the time is used to answer specific questions on what you remember about the case and what MI5's next step should be. The listening challenge is for potential English Language Analysts. This exercise tests your listening skills to see how well your attention to detail and concentration is. It is a five minute phone conversation between two people. After you listen to the conversation you answer a series of ten questions asking about what you have just heard. Depending on your score from either challenge the website tells you if you would be well suited for a job at MI5. [|Investigative Challenge Link] [|Listening Challenge Link]
 * ====[|Major-General Sir Vernon Kell] (1st DG 1909–40)====
 * [|Brigadier Oswald Allen Harker] (2nd DG 1940–41)
 * ====[|Sir David Petrie] (3rd DG 1941–46)====
 * ====[|Sir Percy Sillitoe] (4th DG 1946–53)====
 * ====[|Sir Dick White] (5th DG 1953–56)====
 * ====[|Sir Roger Hollis] (6th DG 1956–65)====
 * ====[|Sir Martin Furnival Jones] (7th DG 1965–71)====
 * ====[|Sir Michael Hanley] (8th DG 1971–78)====
 * ====[|Sir Howard Smith] (9th DG 1978–81)====
 * ====[|Sir John Jones] (10th DG 1981–85)====
 * ====[|Sir Antony Duff] (11th DG 1985–87)====
 * ====[|Sir Patrick Walker] (12th DG 1987–92)====
 * ====[|Dame Stella Rimington] (13th DG 1992–96)====
 * ====[|Sir Stephen Lander] (14th DG 1996–2002)====
 * ====[|Lady Manningham-Buller, Baroness Manningham-Buller] (15th DG 2002–07)====
 * ====[|Sir Jonathan Evans] (16th DG, 2007-13)====

References: [|MI5 Official Website] [|MI5 Wikipedia] [|Daily Mail]

Additional Information: [|MI5 Facts] [|The Guardian] [|BBC] 