Increased e-mail surveillance won't help against terrorists

The British Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, will propose new measures for increasing e-mail and phone surveillance at an emergency meeting of the EU interior ministers on the implications of last Thursday's London bombings. Mr Clarke claimed that the London attacks could possibly have been prevented.

This statement appears to be rather doubtful. There is no evidence to confirm that scanning more e-mails and phone calls would lead to the prior detection of terrorist plots.

There is already an overload of information. The information overload would be further increased with the suggested move. Finding the relevant information would become much harder, and terrorists have proven to be clever in escaping communication surveillance. Paying the price of reducing civil liberties for some vague assumption of increasing security does not appear to be justified.

Email spying 'could have stopped killers. The Observer, 10 July 2005