State of Paranoia

British authorities came under criticism earlier this month following the June 2 raid in Forest Gate. To recap: two brothers had been suspected of building a chemical bomb designed for terror purposes. Neither weapon nor traces of terrorist activity were found.

Botched security measures are nothing new to British authorities. The Sunday Times reported yesterday that British police had in fact been fore-warned about last year’s July 7th attacks. Previously, official statements with regards to the London bombings had declared the attacks as totally unexpected. Check it out here and here.

It has now been confirmed that Mohammad Sidique Khan, leader of the London bombers, had been “monitored and tape-recorded over a period in 2004”. An electronic tracking device (planted by Special Branch officers to monitor suspected terrorists) was recovered from Khan’s car.

Computer expert Martin Gilbertson has also alleged that he had warned police about “suspicious activities” by Khan and one of his accomplices Shehzad Tanweer. Gilbertson described to The Sunday Times how he helped produce anti-Western videos and came into contact with radical Islamists including Khan and Tanweer at his workplace.

The revelations of British authorities having prior intelligence to the plans of the London bombings is just another badge of dishonour to be added to their list of incompetencies along with the botched Forest Gate raid and the accidental killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Not too long ago, Simon Jenkins wrote a convincing piece partly in defence of British security forces. His basic message: Being paranoid about everything is making things worse. He urged the public to rekindle its trust for the police force as it should accept a certain degree of danger so as to “maintain freedom of speech, movement and civil liberty in Britain”. With tougher security measures there will necessarily be tradeoffs in terms of the erosion of civil liberties and individual privacy as well as further increases in bureaucracy.

The informational gap between what technology-savvy criminal and security analysts have access to compared to the general public has been greatly reduced due to the conveniences of the World Wide Web. Previously, people merely accepted authorities’ failed security measures. However, due to today’s narrowing informational gap it is a sad convenience that we now are able to question, blame and condemn the police for not being able to predict the future.