THE VAST stores of digital information generated by everyday lives communications data, credit-card records and much more are now yielding invaluable clues about the terrorist attacks in Paris and are helping guide the hunt for the surviving plotters. But prevention is better than cure. The attacks have highlighted the failure of the authorities to share information across borders and agencies. How can this be improved?
Each government sets different rules for what data may be looked at, by whom and with what authority. This is partly due to politics (Belgium has numerous squabbling police forces); and partly because of legal restrictions as the European Parliament takes privacy extremely seriously, as does the German government. Many Europeans fear that any data shared with America will be snooped on by spy agencies. The attacks also reignited a long-running debate about encryption encoding messages such as e-mails, in ways that even government intelligence agencies cannot break (it is easy to make a code, even with an ordinary computer, and much harder to break it).
Breaking down barriers to information-sharing is a much better idea. Terrorists and criminals cross national borders easily. Law-enforcement should be able to do the same. The police should have access to databases such as passenger name records on internal European flights, and the fingerprints of people who have arrived claiming refugee status. Interior ministers are already pushing strongly for this. Public worries about privacy and abuse of power are reasonable, but the answer to that is good intelligence oversight. Britain for example, is making reforms which would require the spy agencies to have judicial authorisation before they bug individuals, rather than just doing on a politicians say-so.
Source : The Economist (Online)