Two weeks ago, on the 5th June 2017, Professor Bruce Hoffman wrote this two page article 'Can Britain Stop Terrorists While Defending Civil Liberties?' and it is worth a read.
Link:http://nationalinterest.org/feature/...berties-21012?

His views are undoubtedly influenced by the Westminster Bridge attack (March 22nd: using a van & knives), the Manchester Arena bombing (May 22nd) and the London Bridge attack (using a van & knives).

Now we have seen the Finsbury Park attack (North London) by a white man in a van who sought to kill Muslims and killed one.

A couple of key points:
ISIS has thus proven remarkably adept at harnessing the full potential of contemporary communications to motivate, inspire and ultimately animate its minions to action.

(As) a Wall Street Journal editorial warned today, “Do more to contain this internal Islamist insurgency now, or risk a political backlash that will result in even more draconian limits on civil liberties.”
Until recently the official figure for aspiring, suspected who posed a threat was three thousand (a remarkably stable figure for years) and now there twenty thousand others who are of "interest".

For those who wish to delve deeper into how many expressed support for terrorism in opinion polling, in 2015, there are two opinion polls. One for a C4 documentary:http://www.channel4.com/info/press/n...s-really-think

The second, with a bigger sample, was by Policy Exchange. Note it found more non-Muslims supported violence than Muslims:https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-con...ties_FINAL.pdf

It is too early to comment on the Finsbury Park attacker, whose identity remains private and a criminal trial restrains the UK media. Was the van driver a "loner".

It is puzzling to me that the "call to arms" from ISIS resonates far more effectively than the repeated calls to action by AQ. A Londoner friend familiar with the North London scene a few years ago argues that the big change is that low-level criminals are drifting into terrorism.



As ISIS appears to be defeated in terms of territory and governance, with very few going to few going there now; are those left behind the frustrated "wannabe" fighters?

What has recently happened has exposed far more than scale and resources. What do we as a nation, let alone the CT agencies and police, do with those who may pose a threat, but there is either no evidence or a lack of intelligence that would justify targeting and investigation?


The standard Home Office approach of tackling encryption etc has no relevance IMHO to what we face today from the angry becoming a threat rapidly.


Resilience is familiar to US LE, but I do ask is policing in London and several other English cities going to become 'security' dominated, whether from guarding or active investigations?