After Paris, it’s traditional detective work that will keep us safe, not mass surveillance

Following the Snowden revelations,Ppresident Obama established a review into their use which concluded: “The information contributed to terrorist investigations by the use of section 215 [of the PATRIOT Act] telephony meta-data was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional … orders.”

Traditional methods have, even during the internet era, consistently prevented and disrupted terrorist attacks. For every anecdote supporting the usefulness of online surveillance, others exist to underline the role of more mundane interventions and police detective work. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid’s attempt to bring down an airliner, the attempt to bomb Times Square in 2010, and this year’s Thalys train attack at Pas-de-Calais were all averted by the actions of observant and brave members of the public.

The best intelligence is human
It’s widely accepted that intelligence work is the most effective form of counter-terrorism, and that the best intelligence comes from community engagement, not coercion. The arrest in 2008 of Andrew Ibrahim for intent to commit terrorism followed tip-offs from Bristol’s Muslim community, for example. Detective work plays the key role in identifying terrorists after attacks — despite the oft-shown surveillance camera footage of the 7/7 bombers at Luton station, it was forensic examination of corpses and intelligence from the missing persons helpline that identified them.

What public evidence there is on anti-terrorist investigations demonstrates the overwhelming importance of community tip-offs and informants. One of the most robust studies concluded that information from these sources initiate 76 percent of anti-terrorist investigations. This analysis of 225 individuals recruited or inspired by al-Qaeda revealed that “the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal,” playing an identifiable role — with the most generous interpretation of the results — in just 1.8 percent of cases. The vital importance of traditional investigative and intelligence methods is undeniable.

Getting priorities right
A recurring problem is prioritizing and analyzing the information already collected. It’s no longer remarkable to discover that terrorists are already known to police and intelligence agencies. This was the case with 7/7 bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer in London, and some of those thought responsible for the Paris attacks, Brahim Abdeslam, Omar Ismail Mostefai, and Samy Amimour.

Questions are rightly asked about lost opportunities to apprehend them before they could kill, but this does at least indicate that intelligence-gathering is effective. What it also shows is the problem of prioritizing information, and acting on it, particularly when there is an enormous amount of information to process.

Surveillance scholar David Lyon in his analysis of the Snowden revelations suggests that 1.2 million Americans are under surveillance and considered a potential terrorist threat. Notwithstanding debates over proportionality and the reach of such activities, such an enormous number suggests there’s already sufficient surveillance capacity among the surveillance agencies. It’s the ability to properly scrutinize what they learn and make use of it that’s needed — not powers that would allow them to collect even more.

As contemporary philosophers of science have consistently argued, the physical and online realms are intrinsically yoked together. It makes no sense to suggest that surveillance of digital communications and internet use is something de-personalized that doesn’t infringe an individual’s privacy. These are claims made to soften the vocabulary of surveillance and excuse the lack of consent or proportionality.

So we must be wary of the evangelism of those pushing technological solutions to security problems, and the political clamor for mass surveillance. There are practical and cost considerations alongside the debate around the ethics of mass surveillance and its effects on privacy, consent, data protection, the wrongful characterization of innocents as suspects, and the potential chilling effects on free expression. As mechanisms for collecting data become more opaque it becomes increasingly difficult to hold the agencies responsible to account and assess whether the social costs are worth it.

Pete Fussey is Professor of Sociology, University of Essex. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivative).