Professor Ross Anderson, the head of Cryptography at the University of Cambridge's Computer Laboratory, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, has questioned the future of Britain's national security. Speaking to Forbes, Professor Anderson stated: "Were I a legislator, I would simply abolish MI5."

The British secret service, MI5, is in charge of protecting the country from threats of terrorism and espionage. However, it has come under scrutiny recently, after the American whistle-blower Edward Snowden released evidence of mass data collection by intelligence agencies.

Professor Anderson has argued that Britain should be more transparent in the way that it goes about its national security, in the style championed by Denmark and Norway, where issues such as terrorism come under the control of the police.

In his interview with Forbes, Anderson explained that it would be better to entrust national security to "a uniformed, disciplined service that's subject to proper parliamentary and judicial oversight. The way to do it is not to have an organisation like MI5." 

Corruption is a central issue for Anderson, who claims that the lack of transparency and accountability witihin MI5 creates a potential breeding ground for malpractice. 

He points to the example of J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI from 1935 to 1972: "Nobody dared to challenge Hoover, not even Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon." Anderson fears that MI5 may come to have this level of power in the UK: "Once you start getting secret agencies that act as the prime minister's personal bag of tricks, you are laying yourself open to all sorts of corruption."

It is not only the risk of corruption that Professor Anderson believes is at fault with MI5, but also its efficacy. Anderson claims that governments "just don't have the technical or managerial skills [to manage vast amounts of public data]... Only private industry could do that."

Calling MI5 "spooks", Anderson has accused them of collaborating with sites like Google and Facebook to collect data on internet users. Anderson is also the chair of the Foundation for Information Policy Research - a think tank which aims to "understand IT policy issues and explain them to the policy makers and the press." He claims to have been a victim of internet censorship, which he describes as "a growing problem, and not just in developing countries; I've been on the receiving end more than once." 

He adds that the problems of terrorism and espionage are not as large as "scaremongerers" would have us believe, and that the police would be entirely capable of managing these issues, as in Norway and Denmark. He refers to these two countries as being "more civilised" in their approach to matters of security and intelligence. 

Speaking to Varsity, Professor Anderson defended the idea of placing national security into the hands of the police: "I doubt there would be any damage to national security. In my few dealings with MI5 they've not shown much competence, and while the police can screw up too, at least the police are more or less under control. [...] Margaret Thatcher always insisted that terrorists were just criminals. If that's good enough for the Iron Lady, I can live with it too."

He concluded by criticising some of the reactions that he has received towards his idea, claiming that his approach is not "really that radical."