The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) is an all-source intelligence organisation closely related to the United Kingdom Security Service which provides advice to the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

government and firms within the Critical National Infrastructure on

terrorist Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

threats. Operating from

Thames House Thames House is an office building in Millbank, London, on the north bank of the River Thames adjacent to Lambeth Bridge. Originally used as offices by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), it has served as the headquarters of the United Kingdom's ...

Millbank Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster. Millbank is known as the location of major government offices, Burberry headquarters, the Mill ...

in central

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, it provides regular assessments to government departments, major companies and institutions, predominantly in the transport, financial services, utilities and telecommunications industries.

Organisation

The Director of JTAC reports to the

Director General A director general, general director or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''general directors'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals'') is a senior executive officer, often the chief executive officer ...

of the Security Service (commonly known as

MI5 MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...

), and directs a staff including personnel from the Security Service,

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (MI numbers, Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of Human i ...

(commonly known as

MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primari ...

(GCHQ),

Defence Intelligence Staff Defence Intelligence (DI) is an organisation within the United Kingdom intelligence community which focuses on gathering and analysing military intelligence. It differs from the UK's intelligence agencies ( MI6, GCHQ and MI5) in that it is a ...

, Counter Terrorism Policing and a further six government departments. Personnel are seconded to JTAC but remain under the authority of their parent organisations. As a body closely related to the Security Service, JTAC is bound by the provisions of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 and is subject to the oversight of the

Intelligence and Security Committee The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) is a statutory joint committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, appointed to oversee the work of the UK intelligence community. The committee was established in 1994 by the ...

Dissemination of information

Assessments are used to inform the threat levels disseminated through the Security Service,

Home Office The Home Office (HO), also known (especially in official papers and when referred to in Parliament) as the Home Department, is the United Kingdom's interior ministry. It is responsible for public safety and policing, border security, immigr ...

and

Ministry of Defence A ministry of defence or defense (see American and British English spelling differences#-ce.2C -se, spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is the part of a government responsible for matters of defence and Mi ...

. Until very recently these threat levels were promulgated in a form known as the

BIKINI state The Bikini state was an alert state indicator previously used by the UK Ministry of Defence to warn of non-specific forms of threat, including civil disorder, terrorism or war. Signs giving the current alert state were displayed at the entrance t ...

and Tesseral State. The current threat system is similar to, and largely aligned with, the

US Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions involv ...

rating system.

Threat levels

The range of five available threat levels is: *Low – an attack is unlikely *Moderate – an attack is possible, but not likely *Substantial – an attack is likely *Severe – an attack is highly likely *Critical – an attack is highly likely in the near future This is a reduction from the previous seven levels in order to simplify communication to the general public.

Public attention

JTAC rose to public prominence following the terrorist attacks in London in July 2005. Media reporting highlighted a reduction in the threat level from ''"Severe General"'' to ''"Substantial"'' based on the assessment that the risk of an attack was at its lowest point since

9/11 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. These news reports were the first release of threat gradings outside the Critical National Infrastructure.

References

* (pdf)

External links

''The UK's Threat Level System''