Re: Every cloud has a silver lining that makes one fortunate, and in some cases, one a fortune
"...a fabulous opportunity for any and all who are able to supply what is patently missing. And having it on hand and to offer with Creative CyberSpaces' Command and Control Of Computers and Communications does have one pondering and wondering on who would be best placed and/or qualified to accept such an offer on their behalf..."
At the beginning of WW1 the UK had a new, smallish and reasonably competent internal security service directed against German spies. It was set up specifically for this purpose in the anti-german scares leading up to WW1.
Between the wars it languished slightly, but was revived when WW2 came along. In fact, a whole plethora of internal security groupings got set up, usually for quite specific war work, for instance, to address the threats from German radio beams, etc.
At the end of WW2 most of these no longer had a job, and got closed down. The Signals Intelligence work had been so successful that it was retained into peace-time, and the Foreign Intelligence (MI6/SIS) had always been operating (though not as formally as it had during the war). The Internal Security (anti-German spy - MI5/SS) grouping managed to avoid closure by switching to being 'anti-Russian spy', and kept going as before.
This was arguably justified by Eastern Bloc aims during the 1950s and 1960s, which were not that dissimilar from the German spy threat during the 1930s and 1940s. However, as Britain's military position in the world diminished, and as 'Glasnost' emerged in the 1980s, the Russian threat diminished as well, and the Security Service (SS) began to have VERY little to do. It was becoming a little backwater in government, a kind of gentleman's club that always got its budget, but was less and less relevant...
Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. By 1993, Treasury was looking for the 'peace dividend', and could see no function that the SS could perform. SS tried to justify itself by claiming that it could assist with drugs and organised crime - which resulted in turf wars with HM Customs and the Met Police. Along the way it had the government's computer consultancy centre CCTA closed down, so that it could take the computer security budget and split it with CESG. But essentially, it was scraping the bottom of the barrel - there was no real work for it.
Then came 2001 and the 'new threat' of Arab Terrorism. SS were frantic to build this up as a new reason for their existence. This explains why we have had so much interest in destabilising the whole Middle East and starting wars there. So long as the Arabs can be coerced into being enemies, they are a THREAT. And so long as a THREAT exists, SS has a job.
SS had a very nasty scare in 1995-2000. It was staring redundancy in the face. If there is no major threat in the world then there is no need for a specific intelligence service to monitor it - occasional nutters attacking people is standard police work. So SS and its sister agencies work to ensure that a threat always exists. If they were abolished, as they nearly were in 1995, a lot of the major threats would go away....