Military Intelligence Section 5 (MI5): Background information when reading Sweet Tooth

Military Intelligence Section 5 (MI5)

This article relates to Sweet Tooth

Just as the United States has separate bureaus for internal and international intelligence and security (the FBI and the CIA), so too does the United Kingdom. Serena Frome is recruited to be part of the Security Service, the internal counter-intelligence and security agency, more commonly known as MI5 (for Military Intelligence, Section 5). Its sister agency, responsible for international intelligence, is the Secret Intelligence Service. In the 1930s SIS adopted the title of MI6 as a "flag of convenience", becoming one of 17 British military intelligence units during WWII. Other now defunct units included MI1 (code breaking), MI12 (censorship), and MI14 (Germany desk). MI6 fell out of official use years ago but many writers and journalists still use it when referring to SIS.

In Sweet Tooth, Serena and her MI5 colleagues spend a great deal of time investigating communism as well as terrorist threats posed by the Irish Republican Army. Today, according to its website, nearly 90% of MI5's work deals with counterterrorism efforts. In the decades since the setting of Sweet Tooth, MI5 and SIS's partner intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have gained additional prominence as a source for combating potential cyber terrorism. GCHQ was originally founded to intercept and decrypt signals and communications in the early twentieth century, Just like the United States' intelligence agencies, though, the UK's continue to evolve to address the ever-changing technologies and associated threats to national and international security.

Filed under Cultural Curiosities

This "beyond the book article" relates to Sweet Tooth. It originally ran in November 2012 and has been updated for the July 2013 paperback edition. Go to magazine.