Thursday, March 12, 2015

The ISC Report

The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament makes some interesting points.

There is a claim that MI5 could have had a significant possibility to prevent the attack and murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby if they had access to the online exchange between Michael Adebowal and an extremist overseas at the time before the attack. They DID know, or claim to know about the exchange AFTER the attack - as far as I know nothing had changed before or after the attack with respect to the capabilities or the actual activities of the Security Agencies. So did they know? or didn't they know? It is also highly speculative (IMO) that they could have prevented the attack.

The quote:

However, others consider that liberty is most real where security also exists: if the internet is an ungoverned space it can also be a dangerous space, threatening the liberty of all. This was illustrated in this Committee’s Report into the intelligence relating to the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, in which we outlined how Michael Adebowale had expressed his desire to carry out his murderous terrorist attack in an online exchange with an extremist overseas. The Agencies did not have access to this exchange before the attack: had they had access to it at the time, there is a significant possibility that MI5 would have been able to prevent the attack.

The significant possibility that they could prevented the attack is highly dubious as it would seem that the Security Agencies have not had a good track record in this including terror attacks and school girls traveling to Syria.

1 comment:

david said...

At least one of them was already known to the security services, so it's probably more a reliance on the dragnet surveillance (increasing the size of the haystack) rather than using better targeted humint that is the issue.