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MI5

Security Service
Mi5 crest and logotype.svg
Agency overview
Formed 1909 as the Secret Service Bureau
Jurisdiction Her Majesty's Government
Headquarters Thames House, London, UK
Motto Regnum Defende (Defence of the Realm)
Employees 4,037 (31 March 2015)
Annual budget Single Intelligence Account (£2.6 billion in 2014–2015 financial year)
Minister responsible
Agency executive
Website www.mi5.gov.uk

The Security Service, also MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Defence Intelligence (DI). MI5 is directed by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and the service is bound by the Security Service Act 1989. The service is directed to protect British parliamentary democracy and economic interests, and counter terrorism and espionage within the UK.

Within the civil service community the service is colloquially known as Box 500 (after its official wartime address of PO Box 500; its current address is PO Box 3255, London SW1P 1AE).

The service has had a national headquarters at Thames House on Millbank in London since 1995, drawing together personnel from a number of locations into a single HQ facility. Thames House was, until March 2013, shared with the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and is also home to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a subordinate organisation to the Security Service. The service has offices across the United Kingdom including an HQ in Northern Ireland.


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Wikipedia

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