Dear prime minister...
While you take it out on Facebook and all then us citizens would be really delighted if the police would have taken the effort to look into possible terrorist threats when they get hold of information from several sources around the person (including from people in the Mosque he visits!) who tried to warn law enforcement that the person might seriously be up to no good. The person who has now followed up on his actions.
I think there can never be an excuse for the police not to follow up on leads if it turns out that those leads are indeed very serious (which you can pretty sure conclude when even the people running a Mosque start raising their concerns about someone radicalizing I think). Yet here we are. Although the bomber had been put on a list of suspected people we've now learned from (international) media that the police never followed up on more recent warnings and concerns about this person actually becoming a threat.
My parents always taught me that it's usually better to focus on the cause of a problem (and try to fix that) instead of focusing on the symptoms which this problem is causing and trying to remove those. Because although it may look as if you fixed things fact of the matter is still that the initial problem hasn't gone away and can only grow bigger.
But what do us people know, right? Its so much better (<cough>easier</cough>) to focus on Facebook and other social media for spreading nasty videos and helping radicals sort out their plans. Much better for the government to get full access into the backdoors of Facebook so that they can act when something risky takes place. If you guys got your way we'll soon really get a situation when if someone posts a tweet in the likes off: "Let's bomb the bass tonight!" he'll soon be tracked, located and picked up for possible threat speech. Better to be safe than sore, right? Who could have known the person was referring to some kind of lame dance track from the 90's. Collateral damage, safety first!
Yeah, safety first.... By NOT responding when several sources warn law enforcement that they're becoming really worried that a certain Muslim follower acts quite radical. They they even found out he had (indirect) ties into Al Quada and was frequently contacting sources in Syria about all sorts of things. When even his Mosque started to worry about the person (this one still baffled me, shouldn't all alarmbells go off when that happens and these people warn you?)....
And what did the British police do? They had the person placed on a list of people to watch out for. That'd show him! However now it turns out they never followed up in actually monitoring him.
But let's forget about this now, this is the kind of news you read on international media (my source being a Dutch newspaper who ran multiple stories) and which the British seem very protective off. They already scorned the US for allegedly leaking information about the whole thing to the press (I wonder why..). Seems to me the government doesn't want their citizens to know just how much they really did here. It's so much better to blame this on social media and encryption. Because those are evil things. Internet is to blame!
I call that damage control, and I think it's plain out disgusting.
(edit): I'm not claiming the police could have stopped the attack. But I do think it's plain out hypocritical to start a 'hate campaign' against social media when more could have been done. Social media is only the symptom of the real problem.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
