17 November 2015 - After Paris attacks, CIA Head reignites surveillance debate
Paris attacks should be ‘wake up call’ for more digital surveillance, CIA director says
Andrea Peterson and Brian Fung (The Washington Post)
U.S. and European officials are calling for expanded government surveillance powers in the wake of Friday’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, which have killed at least 129 people.
Addressing the violence Monday at a Washington conference, CIA director John Brennan blamed public “handwringing” over U.S. surveillance programs as an obstacle to catching terrorism suspects.
“I do hope that this is going to be a wake-up call,” Brennan said.
Brennan’s comments reflect growing pressure to grant new digital authorities to law enforcement days after the blasts in Paris. Speaking in Washington Monday, European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said “targeted access” to personal data is becoming “crucial” to terror investigations. And British officials debated Sunday whether to fast-track sweeping new legislation that would allow police to monitor citizens’ Web browsing.
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NSA & CIA
Haley Sweetland Edwards (Time)
How did the intelligence community fail to intercept news of these attacks? How did eight terrorists manage to communicate not only with one another, but allegedly with accomplices in the region and with I.S.I.S. leaders in Syria, without attracting the attention of counterterrorism agencies in Europe and the U.S.? More to the point: With more surveillance and fewer privacy protections, is it possible that Friday’s attacks could have been stopped before they began?
It is, of course, an infuriatingly hypothetical question—the stuff of sci-fi crime procedurals—but by Monday, it had sparked a major debate in Washington. Current and former U.S. officials from both the Obama and Bush administrations mostly argued that the Paris attacks illustrate how privacy concerns in the wake of the Snowden leaks went too far, while privacy and civil rights advocates frantically pumped the brakes.
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Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson: Edward Snowden taught these terrorists how to avoid being caught
Simon Harris (ITV News)
Boris Johnson today blamed American whistleblower Edward Snowden for teaching terrorists how to avoid being caught.
London's mayor, writing in the Daily Telegraph, also said the Paris attacks reinforced the government's demand for greater surveillance powers.
And he said he thought a Paris-style attack in London was unlikely but impossible to rule out.
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French Intelligence
Jason Burke and Julian Borger (The Guardian)
France’s intelligence services are facing intense scrutiny over whether they could have prevented the Paris attacks, but their defenders argue the scale and complexity of the jihadi threat has simply overwhelmed the country’s defences.
According to Yves Trotignon, a former counter-terrorism official in the French external service, DGSE, the security services had long feared such an event. They used the terrorist assault on Mumbai in November 2008 as their model, an invasion of a crowded public building by gunmen determined to kill as many people as possible in a short time.
Being prepared for such an attack scarcely makes it any easier to stop, however, given the vast number of potential targets.
“It is extremely difficult to defend against such an attack once it has begun to be executed,” Trotignon said. “We have seen that not only in Mumbai, but also in Nairobi and Peshawar.”
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17 November 2015 - After Paris attacks, CIA Head reignites surveillance debate, La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), novembre 2015. Consulté le 13/12/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2015/17-november-2015-after-paris-attacks-cia-head-reignites-surveillance-debate