Security over privacy

Belgium was able to hinder planned attacks apparently thanks to a wide-ranging raid against a terror network in Verviers and Brussels. In a country in which a blind eye is turned here and there, and chaos manages to have its way due to the complex administrative structures, the police and intelligence agencies work like they should when facing a true threat. They protect their citizens.

However, that wasn't always the case. After the terrible attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels last May, Belgian police officers and investigators learned some lessons. Preventative measures are now the strategy. In September, Belgian police were able to uncover and stop a planned strike on the EU Commission in Brussels in enough time.

Surveillance is necessary

Exactly how the officials picked up the trails of the possible attackers won't be revealed to preserve the integrity of their investigative tactics. The surveillance of telephone calls within the terror cell is likely to have played a decisive role. The police must use intelligent techniques for listening in and evaluating terrorists' conversations as they take place on cell phones or via encrypted Internet channels. Fighting crime takes precedence, but there's still room for concerns about data protection. Belgium has a relatively broad law on recording telephone and communications data. Germany has no regulation. The EU Commission must present a new and better set of guidelines after the European Court of Justice overturned the former law. It's high time for clear and fast action in this area that is so important in combating terrorism.

The threat from Islamist extremists and returning jihadists is frighteningly real. It's close at hand, and it has horrifying consequences, as the attacks in Paris showed.

That's why no one in Europe should be hesitating when it comes to outfitting security agencies with the data and tools they need to bring terrorists to justice in time. And that's true as well for passenger data, which still isn't saved and evaluated centrally in the EU. For trips to the US and Australia, it's perfectly normal to register one's data. Should that not be true of Europe, too?

Use the opportunities available

It's clear that potential terrorists won't be completely prevented from traveling using those measures alone. But we can make it as difficult as possible for radicalized young people from Europe to head to training camps. The two Kouachi brothers who attacked "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris were both on a no-fly list for the US. Traveling there would have been impossible for them.

In Europe, however, they could fly without problems. That's absurd. The security agencies in France - but presumably in Germany and other states, as well - need more personnel to track down and keep an eye on all of the potential dangers and terrorists.

Absolutely scandalous

It's absolutely scandalous that French police had to stop monitoring the murderer brothers a few months before the attack because, due to a lack of personnel, they had other priorities; namely, Islamists considered even more dangerous. We need a better penal system that isolates Islamists in order to put a stop to prisons being used as a mechanism for radicalization. Certainly demands like these are made after nearly every major attack. That doesn't make them wrong, though. They simply still haven't been met.

In this context, a word of support for American intelligence services, such as the NSA, must be said. Its often criticized hyper-surveillance means that the US has access to valuable insights about the global terrorist scene - insights European intelligence services are only too happy to use. Without the US, as one leading security official put it, we would be deaf and blind when it comes to the Middle East. Yes, the right to privacy and data protection are also important, but don't we have to accept certain tradeoffs to protect all of us from terrorism? It's obvious that better research into the terror scene will not prevent every single attack, but that cannot be an argument for failing to at least try it.

It's very difficult to stop radicalized monsters like the perpetrator who, with virtually no scruples and without warning, shot dead people in a Jewish supermarket, as well as a police officer. But this man, too, wasn't entirely a lone wolf. He belonged to a network, and his girlfriend was an accomplice. He procured his weapons in Belgium. He, too, must have communicated and left traces. French authorities didn't discover him in time. Why not?