Terrorism and Surveillance Research Paper

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Terrorist Surveillance

Critical overview of the reading

Just as national governments possess information-gathering capacities, so do terrorists and members of other types of criminal organizations. The United States has the CIA and similarly every terrorist organization has a branch of its operations solely devoted to gathering information (Nance 2008:188). However, unlike governments, any member of the terrorist or criminal organization can be a potential observer, even children. This is why it is especially vital that suspicious actions of potential terrorists are monitored because it may not be immediately obvious who is amassing intelligence that could be used in a potential attack against the U.S. The fact that surveillance of renegade groups is so potentially far-reaching in its implications and character, yet so amorphous in nature, means that detecting it is both necessary and extremely difficult.

Intelligence operatives in the U.S. must be mindful of the risk that they may be watched. They should carefully study the history of potentially dangerous groups to detect surveillance patterns and patterns of attack. Coordination with other law enforcement agencies is essential to have an ongoing free flow of information. Regardless of whether terrorist observation is overt or discrete, it can have deadly consequences if not monitored and effective monitoring must be a mutually-coordinated effort (Nance 2008:190).

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While surveillance by actual government groups tends to be quite sophisticated, terrorist surveillance tends not to be particularly professional in nature. If it escapes notice, it is not because of its finesse, but because of the simple fact that it is not expected at that particular place, at that point in time. Terrorist observation may also be fixed in nature (focused on a single observational point) or mobile (free-floating and deployed by moving operatives). The latter is often harder to detect unless a number of 'hits' of the same observing person are detected over a short period of time (Nance 2008:190). Auditory surveillance is also a risk in the form of 'bugging.'

Terrorists may use still or moving photography to conduct visual surveillance: simple observation can be very revealing from the perspective of a terrorist. Even 'open source' photographs not strictly designed to provide intelligence information can be unintentionally revealing. Also, there is a great deal of technology available to terrorists online (both legitimate and illegitimate) to make spying easier than ever before (Nance 2008:192). Once again,….....

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