MI5 reveals secrets on Instagram

Secret service have begun posting pictures

Author: Louise EastonPublished 22nd Apr 2021

MI5 has posted its first picture on Instagram from inside it's London headquarters.

The secret service says it's using the platform to try and attract the 'best and brightest, regardless of background.'

Apparently the account will post never-before-seen material from its archives, but the service has stressed there are still aspects of their work that must remain secret.

The caption under the first photo reads: : The secret to successful spying? Consider all angles. It'll give you a better view...

"This is the view our staff see as they enter MI5 HQ in Thames House, London. Behind these pods lie some of the UK's best kept secrets.''

MI5 will use the social platform to also host online Q&As with serving intelligence officers.

Director general Ken McCallum said the service would still need to keep many of its secrets so it can operate undetected in dangerous environments.

"The other half of the dilemma is that MI5's ability to keep the country safe and resilient also depends on our reaching out to others who can help us, and whom we in turn can help,'' he wrote in The Daily Telegraph.

"We owe it to the public to be constantly striving to learn and improve; and in our fast-moving world, with technology advancing at incredible speed, it would be dangerous vanity to imagine MI5 can build all the capabilities it needs inside its own bubble.''

"We must get past whatever Martini-drinking stereotypes may be lingering by conveying a bit more of what today's MI5 is actually like, so that people don't rule themselves out based on perceived barriers such as socio-economic background, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, disability, or which part of the country they happen to have been born in,''.

The account, @mi5official, follows GCHQ, which joined the Facebook-owned social network in October 2018.