Intelligence & Espionage playlist:
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“This film explores techniques used by surveillance teams, specifically the use of three cars to monitor the subject.”
This film, shot in London and with a British narrator, appears to have been produce by MI5 or possibly Special Branch. The CIA title at the opening says “Internal Use Only” presumably because the Brits gave it to their American cousins with this stipulation. Then someone took a print for the National Archives. Oops.
Every musical track on the film generated copyright strikes, so unfortunately I was forced to remove all of the music in between narration. The narration is all intact.
Public domain film from the US National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
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 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994. 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.
Details of the northern operations centre in Greater Manchester were revealed by the firm who built it. Plans to open the northern operations centre were reported by The Manchester Evening News in February 2005, and plans to open a permanent Scottish office in Glasgow were reported by The Scotsman in January of that year…
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in Ireland and the Royal Thai Police. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, usually of a political nature, and conducts investigations to protect the State from perceived threats of subversion—particularly terrorism and other extremist activity…
United Kingdom
The first Special Branch in the world was formed in London in 1883. It spread throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Each British police force went on to form its own Special Branch, the largest being that of the Metropolitan Police until it was merged with the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13) to form Counter Terrorism Command or SO15 in 2006. Special Branch maintained contact with the Security Service. Although they were not part of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), they were entitled to use the prefix “Detective” in front of their ranks.
Special Branch had responsibility for, amongst other things, personal protection of (non-royal) VIPs and performing the role of examining officer at designated ports and airports, as prescribed by the Terrorism Act 2000.
The intelligence work of Special Branch was often overlooked in some circles. This is because its role sat somewhere between that of the Security Service (MI5) and that of the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13). Special Branch officers were usually the ones to perform arrests of suspected spies, since MI5 officers are not authorised to take such actions; an example being the Portland Spy Ring.
It was announced, in September 2005, that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch would be merging with the Anti-Terrorism Branch of the Metropolitan Police to form a new department called Counter Terrorism Command, with the new department coming into being on 2 October 2006…
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