Counterterrorism

MI5 Use 'Minority Report' Techniques to Stop Terror Attacks Before They Happen

A special unit of the MI5 called the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), is made up of criminologists, psychologists and other academics and was launched in 2004 to analyze suspects behaviors and to determine whether they are about to carry out an attack.

The central aim of the BSU is to flag any potential threats; they are mainly looking for those people, who will boast about or are ready to carry out an attack.

The people who are selected for surveillance tend to be chosen based on intelligence gathered from the agency's network of informants as well as from information from the public.