Officials and politicians are calling for greater powers to monitor communications in the wake of the Paris attacks, but some observers say that approach is misguided and will do little to improve the gathering of intelligence on terrorists.
British Chancellor George Osborne has announced plans to recruit 1,900 extra security and intelligence staff and “make a top priority of cyber security,” following the attacks in Paris.
Osborne said the government wants to pass a bill - which human rights activists have criticised as a “snoopers’ charter” - to expand the security services’ power to collect bulk online data.
Computer scientist George Danezis, head of the Information Security Research Group at University College London, believes the new measures would do little to help prevent attacks like those in Paris.
In the US, some officials put part of the blame for the supposed intelligence failure on US National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.
John Brennan, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said “a number of unauthorised disclosures and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role... make our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.”
Brennan’s argument, outlined in a speech to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, appears to be that the leaking of information on surveillance programmes has spurred would-be terrorists to be more evasive online.
He said there are “a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult, both technically as well as legally, for intelligence and security services to have the insight they need to uncover it.”
French politicians and investigators believe the Paris attacks were the result of internationally co-ordinated planning - plotted in Syria, prepared in Belgium and carried out by Islamic State accomplices in France.
Islamic State has an established propaganda presence on Twitter, utilising the micro-blogging website to recruit members and promote its views.
The New York Times reported that the group has recently broadcast communiques via Telegram, the Berlin-based service that boasts its messages are “heavily encrypted and can self-destruct.”
The statement in which Islamic State claims responsible for Friday’s attacks was distributed via the upload platform justpaste.it.
Osborne said the group’s “murderous brutality has a strong digital element.”
“At a time when so many others are using the Internet to enhance freedom and give expression to liberal values and creativity, they are using it for evil,” he said.
Osborne claimed terrorists are trying to develop the capability to mount cyber attacks on hospitals, power plants, air traffic control and other infrastructure.
But Danezis said he was “a little bit sceptical about doomsday scenarios.”
“There are many safeguards,” he said. “Good engineering should prevent such things.”
Islamic State’s widespread online presence leads many to assume that the Paris terrorists, linked by some analysts to a mastermind in Syria, must have used some form of online communication.
But there is no evidence so far to back some officials’ claims they used encrypted digital communications to plan their attacks, or that any planning took place online.

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