Is it really true that this kind of attack is largely unpreventable? That seems to be the consensus view of all the MSM commentators I've been reading/watching/listening to today -- in particular they seem to be pointing to both the nature of public transit (mainly its density, I guess) and the the freedom essential to liberal democracy. So, intelligence and surveillance can't work because there are too many commuters to keep track of, and in any case keeping track of us all would infringe on our rights. You could read this whole sentiment as a sort of unarticulated cost-benefit analysis: our freedoms are worth more than these lives, this carnage -- certainly a true statement, grim as it might sound. That consensus view turns out to be a kind of moral political statement as much as an organizational one.
(By the way, for some prevention might just mean stamping out all the terrorists, but I think this view is pretty delusional on its face. The whole point of the above statements is that there is a fundamental structural vulnerability for dense liberal democracies, one that will likely be exploited as long as there is high stakes political conflict. Thus the war on terror can be successful only to the extent that stamping out terrorists is synonymous with stamping out political conflict -- ie not at all.)
These days I almost never read any of the old-style warblogs, but when I woke up this morning and wanted commentary on the bombings, my point of departure was this Instapundit post. From there I was quickly swept into a world of wall-to-wall enthusiastic coverage that was, despite its noticable political tint, extremely informative. Of course, even more impressive than all this largely synthesized content was the flood of original content provided by amateur photographers here and elsewhere. Many MSM outlets were carrying captures from cell phones right up there with pictures from their own photographers.
You say that "...intelligence and surveillance can't work because there are too many commuters to keep track of..." This is simply a problem of computing power. Given enough number crunching ability (and high res cameras which increase the demand on number crunching ability), it should be possible to identify and track individuals across a metropolis with linked cameras.
London would be the ideal place to test and develop this technology as the British public has already largely submitted to being photographed wherever they go. A minister on the news this morning talking about finding the bombers revealed the average Londoner is seen by security cameras 250 times a day in their travels through Central London.
The last part of that sentence "... in any case keeping track of us all would infringe on our rights." is the important one. Are we ready to give up anonymous activity in exchange for stopping or catching bombers?
Maybe you can track them, but what good does it do you unless you can anlyze the ifnormation in real time? There are tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of commuters in a big city, and you can't keep track of all of them if you don't even know where to look. The cameras are helpful for looking at who was where after an attack, but they're pretty much useless for preventing one.
Well, it's like murder or burglary. You can't necessarily prevent a bombing but you can prevent a SECOND bombing by the same people (it's not theorized that these were suicide bombings from the reports I've seen).
That's true. But again, once you know who you're dealing with enough to have biometrics, hopefully you have them in custody!
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