Andrew Parker has warned that activity is harder to detect now than ever, and there has been a 'dramatic upshift' in the type of threats seen
TECH FIRMS must show "ethical responsibility" and do far more to combat terrorists online, the boss of MI5 has declared.
Andrew Parker warned that Britain is facing an unprecedented threat of terror today, and that activity from sick terrorists is harder than ever to detect.
Spymaster Andrew Parker issued the warning after The Sun exposed how easy it was to buy bomb-making parts via the web superstore.
It cost our investigators just £95 to purchase ingredients used by the suicide bomber who killed 22 in the Manchester Arena horror.
He said that the terror threat today was the highest threat he had seen in his 34-year career at MI5 - and the scale of the problem is hard to keep up with.
Mr Parker revealed that 20 attacks on British soil had been thwarted in the past four years - including SEVEN in as many months.
Mr Parker said maniacs were helped by “the ease of online purchasing, social media content or encrypted communications”.
The MI5 director general declared: “Addressing these challenges is about partnerships and ethical responsibilities.”
He said: "All those (technological) developments that we have give opportunities at the edges to terrorists."
Some action is being taken and they were "not the enemy", but the pace of change was so quick that the firms needed to stay on top of their game.
And he revealed that 130 Brits who had travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight for so-called Islamic State had died - with around 800 in total leaving for the area.
The top boss said: "Today there is more terrorist activity, coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect.
He went on: "We're now running well over 500 live operations involving around 3,000 individuals known to be currently involved in extremist activity in some way.
"As well as those we are looking at today, risk can also come from returnees from Syria and Iraq and also the growing pool of over 20,000 individuals we've looked at in the past in our terrorism investigations.
"And there will be some violent extremists not yet known to us at all."
He admitted that it was not possible to be "perfect" and stop all attacks, because they can go from "inception through planning to action in just a handful of days".
Mr Parker also paid tribute to the 4,000 MI5 staff working on hundreds of operations.
He said that whenever an attack happens, everyone was "deeply affected, on a personal and professional level".
