What could possibly go wrong? To track them would be “Islamophobic.”
“Berlin police are not allowed to track down terrorists on the Internet,” translated from “Berliner Polizei darf Terroristen nicht im Internet aufspüren,” by Gunnar Schupelius, BZ, November 20, 2019 (thanks to Searchlight Germany):
The Syrian Abdul H. (26) lived in Meraner Strasse (Schöneberg). He was arrested on Monday by the special unit “GSG 9”. According to Attorney General Peter Frank, Abdul H. wanted to detonate a bomb “to kill and injure as many people as possible”. Over the Internet he procured the necessary components and instructions.
Interior Senator Geisel (SPD) reported that Abdul H. had been under surveillance since the beginning of the year. German investigators came onto his trail, but only after a referral from a “friendly foreign intelligence service”.
This phrase refers to either the American services (NSA, CIA, FBI) or the British (MI 5, MI 6, GCHQ), or the Israeli Mossad. In the past three years, the German authorities have prevented eight major Islamist terrorist attacks, most recently on November 12 in Offenbach. The decisive hints always came from the “friendly services”.
Why can’t Germany help itself? Do we have worse policemen? No, but we have worse equipment and high legal hurdles.
Abdul H. was caught trying to obtain the bomb on his smart phone via the Telegram news service. The “friendly services” caught him because they routinely monitor sites on the Internet using semantic analysis techniques. They use their computers to focus on keywords. If any of these terms appear spoken or written, the sender is located.
This search without suspicion is not permitted in Germany. Anyone preparing a terrorist attack here will initially go undetected. And even if suspicion arises, the Berlin police have their hands tied….