But it is not known which laws they are allowed to break and which not, you just mentioned killing people for the first time, neither I nor the article did this

But it is not known which laws they are allowed to break and which not, you just mentioned killing people for the first time, neither I nor the article did this. What about breaking into houses to plant bugs? I would actually be surprised if they were not allowed to do this. And I picked the example of beating someone up not totally at random, people went to court against the MI5 and MI6 because of their involvement with deportation of British citizens to Guantanamo [1] which may or may not turn out to be a worse fate than getting beaten up in a dark alley. And last but not least, the licence to kill [2] seems to be an actual thing. [1] http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimony-of-foreign-intelligence-personnel/guantanamo-bay-detainee-sues-british-intelligence-agencies-over-torture/ http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_to_kill_(concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_to_kill_(concept)