The "reasonable" way of handling such situations would be to notify suspects that they are in a watchlist for "terrorist threat" and listing maybe inside a police station what punishment the risk by "acting".
How do you get probable cause (say, for a potential terrorist attack) without spying? People organizing mass violence tend to hide their tracks pretty well.
Personally, I think the risk of terrorist attacks is pretty low compared to other risks. But, at a certain point it needs to be addressed.
We probably should have nationwide "fire drills" for these sort of society-level threats.
This reminds me of Bruce Schneier's Security Theatre - that we should not try the preventative approach to terrorism (including spying on everyone) but should focus on detective work and emergency response.
As a society, at the society wide level, we have few if any accepted plans. Sure there is the usual martial law plus bits but that is bound to be resisted or ignored. The fact that HN (with a higher % of the population of people who actually ask themselves these sort of questions) has no single answer tells me we need a commonly understood response - most people instinctively know "stay inside, no travel" but the barest preparation would help exponentially if anything did happen.
Also worth mentioning: The authorities already knew the subjects. The supposedly even had recent warnings regarding Charlie Hebdo. They have had police officers there for a long time, too. And for most cases of terrorism in the last decades it was the same.
Generally, the police usually knows about the suspects before. They just can't do much before they commit a crime. The unwarranted surveillance of everyone can't possibly prevent attacks by people who already were filtered anyway. Much better to invest the budget in classical targeted intelligence and police work and into improving the response _if_ something has happened.
Of course you don't want to cower in fear and act terrorized. Yet, sending the message that any steps necessary to catch terrorists will be taken within reason is a powerful deterrent. You can't just fade into the shadows. The entire city will contribute to finding and neutralizing the threat.
I'm wondering if there are any of us who would suggest that right after a terrorist attack, it might be a good idea _not_ to share with the bad guys how we're going to stop them? I mean, maybe hold off for a week or so while we figure out if:
If the attack you are worried about is terrorism (which I imagine it must be, since that's the thing these things purport to stop, I suppose), then I don't think this is a big problem. Terrorists get about as much bang for their buck whether or not they get caught, so they can presumably just try out their strategies a few times and see if they get caught.
It seems that no one who brings this argument up
acknowledges the possibility that terrorism doesn't seem
like a big threat precisely because of the extreme
precautions taken to stop it.
Then on the one hand, the FBI and CIA would regularly, and very publicly, celebrate the apprehension, or otherwise prevention, of would-be terrorists, with some non-detailed description of the realistic terrorist attacks they were planning to undertake.
It would increase morale at those agencies, increase their standing with the public and discourage other would-be terrorists. Not much is given away if we are told the 4 people apprehended 'planned to plant a bomb at a plane in JFK airport by sneaking past security'.
Instead, we only get the occasional apprehension of delusional people with ludicrous plans.
On the other hand, if there really were many terrorists with actual plans, there would occasionally be a successful attack. Even at an unbelievable 99% prevention ratio, some would come through. An illegal immigrant loner building pipebombs in his cabin-in-the-woods could easily escape detection.
The much simpler explanation is that there simply aren't many terrorists with realistic terrorist plots. If anything, this surveillance should be defended by appeals to 'stopping the next mass shooting': that's an example of a crime that occasionally happens, while also many are prevented.
I thought about that. But if finding a terrorist is like trying to find a needle in the haystack, Schneier suggestion (as well as any other expert in security will tell you), the best solution is truly random search. If it is truly random, the terrorists have no way to predict if they will be checked and if it is frequent enough, it will be sufficient to change their behavior.
As for the point of sense of safety vs. real safety (impossible) is a well taken one. But this false safety could be dispensed with much lower costs for the citizens (both in terms of money and inconvenience).
What if the terrorists start using plain old mail? Or the telephone? Or just meeting up in a cafe? Do all of those things need to be regulated? Should they open everyone's mail and read it?
After all, you could be writing bad words. Should we just have everyone in the country "check in" every week to make sure they aren't doing anything unusual? Where does it stop?
I thought the UK was very forward looking in their responses so far to the violence. Things I've seen on TV have lead me to believe that standing up and not being afraid is the best medicine for this type of action. Maybe I was wrong.
Ok, so by "terrorist" I assume you mean someone who's technically innocent, because you have no proof of a crime?
By "the bomb goes off killin 243 people", you invoke hindsight. Ok, so now we're talking about how to best prevent an attack that kills 243 (or so) people, given we have a suspect in custody.
You seem to imply the answer is that our best chance of preventing the first bomb was to torture the person we at the time couldn't know was a terrorist. But maybe the best way would be to sweep for parked abandoned cars?
You do clearly illustrate why if you don't have oversight, institutions dealing with violent crime etc are likely to degenerate.
I don't know how much faith I'd put into your hypothetical.
I'm not implying the terrorist threat is large – it's really, super small. But just because they haven't done THAT yet, doesn't mean they won't. So far, in the US, what they've done is sneak explosives onto planes.
The primary problem with this approach is "suffering accountability". When 85,000 people die of car accidents, there's typically no singular group or individual to blame for all the accidents, in total.
With a terrorist act, there is a singular group or individual who is responsible for the suffering of multiple individuals, plus all the suffering of those who view the news around the attack and become fearful as a result.
If we collectively perceive this group or individual could have reasonably been stopped, might we be likely tend to underestimate the costs of stopping them completely? When we underestimate the costs of "perfect" crime prevention, perhaps our expectations in those who need to stop crimes goes up.
And maybe, just maybe, when law enforcement has high expectations placed on them, and their budget is limited, they might be more susceptible to fall into cognitive dissonance - literally believing they must stop all crime on a tight budget.
I'd say, if these assumptions are true, mass surveillance becomes an option at that point.
That's an interesting way to look at it, but it doesn't appear apt to me. These actions look to me like an ongoing reaction to attacks, not rational attempts to reduce the overall impact.
In any case, if you can reduce the immune reaction, that's far preferable. I don't see any reason why we can't reduce the overreaction to terrorism.
I think you underestimate the impact this type of terrorism has. The real massive danger is constantly trying to downplay it. The simple fact is, when facing an irrational enemy the last thing you can do is try to shift the blame to those who react.
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