UK Counter-Terrorism (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

After recent attacks several voices have suggested the use of internment (detention with trial); in part citing the volume of suspects (3-23k), the lack of resources and evidence for criminal proceedings.

This article 'Scrapping human rights is as great a threat to democracy as terrorism' reviews the history - mainly its use in Northern Ireland (1971-1975, it had been used in an earlier campaign by the Irish Republic) - and wider political implications.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jul...ism-democracy?

I am a pessimist that politicians will use internment, probably under a supposedly more subtle title, if there is a series of successful attacks with high casualties - to be "seen to do something" and avoid a public backlash.

[davidbfpo]

The UK government has placed stress on the dangers posed by enemies and suspects having secure communications, even after extending the legal powers to conduct surveillance.

So when a former GCHQ Director disagrees publicly one should sit up. There is a short BBC radio interview, AM today and is summarised as:

The former head of GCHQ has said that cooperation between government agencies and private companies is the best solution "to target the people who are abusing encryption systems."
Robert Hannigan warned that "building back doors" in encryption systems was "a threat to everybody" and suggested that the government and private companies work more closely together to tackle the problem.

Link to podcast (hopefully it can be viewed outside the UK):http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0588hvv

A specialist IT online journal has a longer article; other issues were covered.

Link:https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/0...ption_debate/?

[davidbfpo]

An excellent overview of this small activist group, that has always maintained it was not violent, just that so many passed through who did turn to violence, by Raffaello Pantucci - on his publishers website:http://www.hurstpublishers.com/al-mu...itish-society/

One passage:

But the reality is that they (UK CT) are addressing the same threat that has been managed for the past two decades. Incremental improvements are made in our response, some bad policies are binned, and some are steered off a path to violence, but it is not clear that we are materially eradicating the ideas and groups that are ultimately behind the violence on our streets.

[davidbfpo]

There is an article, with graphs on a newspaper website:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/ma...st-attacks-uk/

Via Twitter:

Not sure why state action is labelled 'terrorism'. The author has clarified that 259 deaths due to 'state terrorism' were those killed in the Pan-Am Flight 103, that hit Lockerbie, Scotland December 21st 1988.

[davidbfpo]

David Wells is a UK-based risk analyst and his background is in Anglo-Australian intelligence analysis. The link is to the transcript of an interview:http://www.bicom.org.uk/blogpost/day...w-david-wells/

He ends with a comment wider than the UK:

There have been different waves of threats over the decades that have different defining factors and the international community needs to keep up with the current wave and its next shift. There’s a danger that some governments are still dealing with the wave of 10-15 years ago, where people in the West fitted the model of ‘radicalisation due to the lack of opportunity and education’. Unfortunately, this model (which I’m simplifying here) isn’t necessarily widely applicable today.

The interview is part of a series 'The day after ISIS', by a previously unheard of group Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre or BICOM and their explanation:

In this conversation on the future of the Middle East after the Islamic State (IS), we bring together experts to debate the prospects for reconstruction and governance in IS-held territory, the future of the Jihadi movement, how to mitigate against the return of IS fighters, and the future regional security framework. We ask the experts what policymakers need to start thinking and planning after the territorial defeat of the most dangerous terrorist group to date.

Link to the interview series, back to May 2017:http://www.bicom.org.uk/analysis/day...islamic-state/

[davidbfpo]

Last week Jonathan Evans, ex-Mi5 Director General (ret'd in 2013) was interviewed on BBC Radio:

Over that period the threat has come and gone but the underlying threat has continued. Since 2013 there have been 19 attempted attacks that have been disrupted and even since the attack at Westminster we are told there have been six disruptions, so this is a permanent state of preparedness.We're at least 20 years into this. My guess is that we will still be dealing with the long tail in over 20 years' time. I think this is genuinely a generational problem. I think we are going to be facing 20 to 30 years of terrorist threat and therefore we need, absolutely critically, to persevere.

Link to article:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40890328 and link to the interview itself:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-poli...at-for-decades

In the radio programme the UK's current senior CT police officer did a Q&A interview:http://news.met.police.uk/blog_posts...errorism-60655

[davidbfpo]

In his first selected media appearance MI5's Director said there was currently "more terrorist activity coming at us, more quickly" and that it can also be "harder to detect". He added that more than 130 Britons who travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight with so-called Islamic State had died.

A couple of quotes:

They are constantly making tough professional judgements based on fragments of intelligence; pinpricks of light against a dark and shifting canvas.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41655488 and https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...-mi5-islamist?