After Paris, there will be no stopping the surveillance state now
Public surveillance increasing at an ‘accelerating rate,’ researchers say, with Europe leading the way
CCTV footage of three British girls catching a flight to Turkey in February to join ISIS dominated the news media for days and likely contributed to the public thirst for answers. (Metropolitan Police/Associated Press)
An old acquaintance who spent years in Canada’s secret world, where he developed a you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it smile, regularly sends me taunting emails and links.
The general theme is that thanks to all the whinging in the mainstream media about civil liberties, and the cavilling by politicians who disagreed with Stephen Harper about the imminent danger posed by Islamic terrorism to Canadians everywhere, our security agencies are unnecessarily hobbled.
After the mass murders in Paris this week, he passed on an article by the conservative writer Mark Steyn, who wrote that instead of meeting about climate change, “a problem that doesn’t exist,” Western leaders should be doing something about the millions of Muslims who now live in Europe, most of whom “at a certain level either wish or are indifferent to the death of the societies in which they live — modern, pluralist, Western societies.”
My friend the ex-spy — who, like a number of security professionals I’ve met over the years, holds an advanced degree — clearly believes the only sensible remedy is increased powers for state security organs.
And that anyone who refuses to accept that premise, or who wants to debate root causes, is quite simply advocating self-destruction.
- Just watch France: the new face of the war on terror
- Paris attacks have countries ramping up security
John Brennan, the CIA director, used the Paris massacre to make essentially the same point this week, denouncing “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”
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