Spies have found it more difficult to trail suspects during the pandemic because of the empty streets caused by lockdown, the director-general of MI5 revealed yesterday.
Ken McCallum, who took over the security service in April, also revealed that would-be terrorists were altering their plans because there were fewer crowds to target.
Detailing how MI5’s activities had changed, Mr McCallum said his officers spent significant amounts of time on the near-empty streets and “covert surveillance is not straightforward”.
The agency’s adversaries were aware that Covid-19 had “turned the world upside down” and there was a risk that they would deploy biological, chemical or radiological materials in a future attack, he warned. The authorities had been alive to that risk for years, however, and it was
