Terrorism, Mass Surveillance and Security

I remember the morning of the 22 Mars 2016. I was going to the office with my wife, just like every morning. As we were stepping out of the elevator from our apartment in the south of Brussels, I received a notification from the BBC on my phone: “Explosions heard in Brussels Airport”. At this moment we did not realize what was happening, and we did not even consider not going to work. We were in our car, stocked in the usual traffic jam, somewhere in the 4 miles that separate our home from the office, and we were completely shocked about what we were hearing on the radio. Very quickly, while we were still in the car, we received the first videos of the ruins of the airport, still smoking and people fleeing and shouting. When we arrived at the office, located in the heart of Brussels, we learned that another explosion had just occurred at the subway station “Maelbeek”, a stone’s throw away from where we were. Everybody was terrified. We received dozens of messages from our friends and family, asking if we were still alive. Luckily yes, we were.

The following days, chaos took over Brussels. While we were still counting the number of victims, the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (CUTA), an agency composed of representatives from the State Security, the Intelligence Services and from the federal government, decided to increase the level of threat to the maximum level. Part of the public transportations where stopped, cultural events and places like cinemas, concert venues where closed. People were advised to stay at home. The investigators were still looking for the “man in the hat” who was filmed by the CCTV of the airport, accompanying the two suicide bombers. The city lived at the rhythm of the searches by the special unit of the federal police, assisted by heavily armed soldiers. To catch one of the few trains still riding, people had to go through strict security checks for which they had to wait during hours, thereby creating huge lines and enormous gathering of people.

Living in Brussels, I already encountered this situation. After the Paris Attack, the CUTA decided to lock down Brussels, to prevent an “imminent attack”. During 5 days, the capital of Europe was locked, everything was closed. Armored vehicles were placed around every potential target. I stumbled over a dozen of these military trucks just by walking back and forth the half mile from my office to the Palace of Justice (I had to submit trial briefs). The lock down was based upon information collected by the authorities, even if this information was (and is still today) unclear. In an interview given to the channel ABC News, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affair mentioned that the authorities were looking for 10 potential terrorists, heavily armed. In this interview, the Minister also confirmed that the collaboration with foreign intelligence services enabled the collection of very precise information about an imminent attack in Brussels. Despite the lack of information, the Belgians collaborated to the police operations. When the police asked the people to stop giving information about the police operations on Twitter, certain persons did not comply with this request. The Belgians decided to massively tweet pictures of cats. The idea was: “if you cannot prevent this information, you can make it hard to find, like finding a needle in a haystack”. By this action, it seems like Belgians were acknowledging the need for police operations, to protect their security. After 5 days, the authorities decided to stop the lockdown, even though they did not find the “10 potential terrorists, heavily armed” at this time.

These two events (the attacks and the lockdown of Brussels) illustrate two different kinds of security failures. In the first case, the security measures failed to prevent the attacks, in the other case, the preventive security measures did not lead to any suspect being arrested. These failures raise the question of the justification of the massive surveillance. In most cases, massive surveillance is justified by the need for security. As in the example of the Belgians tweeting cats, this seems to be the main reason for which people accept it.

Even though there are counterexamples where the authorities succeeded to stop the attacks before they occur, it is worth noting that in some of the recent attacks, the perpetrators were already listed as potentially dangerous and were known by the authorities (it was the case for the Paris and Brussels attacks, but also for the attacks in Orlando, where the terrorist had already been interviewed several times by the FBI). In other words, the surveillance of these persons did not prevent them from perpetrating their attacks.

Even more recently, the attacks were perpetrated by so called "lone wolfs", namely individuals that more or less suddenly decide on their own to commit terrorist attacks, without having previous links with a terrorist cell. This was for example the case of the attacks in Nice. According to witnesses, the terrorist got radicalized very quickly. These new kinds of terrorists raise new questions for enforcement authorities: they are difficult/impossible to detect and to prevent.

Finally, masive surveillance does not prevent terrorists from using encryption making it harder for massive surveillance to be really effective(which does not mean encryption should be regulated).

Conclusion

Some argue that the above flaws in the security offered by massive surveillance are the proof that more surveillance should be carried out. Surveillance through data mining of online behaviors could show a correlation between certain behaviors and terrorists' behaviors, and therefore give a more or less reliable indication that a person is about to commit an attack.

In my opinion, this would imply that the entire population gives up most of its rights to privacy and of free speech, in exchange for a tool that I believe would be much less efficient than prevention campaigns, education and social policies aiming at inclusion and diversity.