Tracking terrorist networks: problems ofintelligence sharing within the UKintelligence community

The 7/7 terrorist attacks demonstrated that there were some clear deficiencies withthe organisation of the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism intelligence community. In theaftermath of the attacks, there were moves to develop a more robust ‘counter-terrorismnetwork’ in the United Kingdom that would facilitate better communication and intelligencesharing. While recent developments are to be welcomed, the reforms have not addressedsome of the fundamental cultural, institutional and technological issues at the heart of theproblem. The creation of an effective counter-terrorism network demands that informationflows more freely through the intelligence community and that institutional boundaries arebroken down. Until these obstacles have been overcome, the new counter-terrorism networkwill continue to be hampered by the same old problems of intelligence sharing