The Daily Demarche is on my blogroll and is generally speaking an excellent site. However the good doctor gets it all wrong when it comes to European Anti-terrorism/security. Firstly he might want to think of France, a land which has a "robust" attitude towards terrorists on French soil. While certain political morons may decry Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib for short term political advantage, the French security services round up suspects all over the place, and generally fails to listen to wimpy human rights lawyers who complain. And likewise the Germans, the British and other countries make frequent arrests of suspected Islamic terrorists. Undoubtedly he is right that coordination is not all that it might be, but then from what I read I'd say that the USA has got some major issues in that area too, and in general I'd rather have that than a police state which seems ot be the alternative.
However my major gripe with Dr D is on airport security where he says:
I recently had to transfer through one of the major EU airport hubs, and while we were making final descent and the crew was thanking everyone for flying with them they included the announcement "Passengers connecting to the United States of America are urged to proceed directly to their gate without delay as security precautions are intense and time consuming." I had never heard that announcement before, and was taken aback momentarily, until it struck me that this must mean all of the other security precautions in the airport were not intense! That, gentle reader, does not a comforting thought produce. As I completed my trip I was careful to note the state of airport security in the three EU countries I passed through: basically non-existant. In two airports I checked in at a self-serve kiosk and never showed an ID to anyone. My bags were quickly x-rayed, and that was it. I hate standing in line at the airport, but I dislike the thought of the lax security even more so.
Dr D thinks that showing ID is an aid to security. Why? Any competant terrorist will have half a dozen apparently valid passports or ID cards. They may not work when scanned by a real customs/immigration guy but they will work fine when shown to a harassed check-in desk person. Heck in most cases a perfectly valid ID will be fine, the shoebomber and the 9/11 hijackers all used their own IDs without a problem and I guess most future terrorists will too because, to put it simply, terrorists will not get themselves on a watchlist. The way to stop hijackings and bombs on planes is to Xray the luggage and search the passengers.
As a frequent European traveller I can say that the police who do this job at most European airports are highly efficient and unswayed by a requirement to not "profile" travellers. Dr D seems to think that long lines are a sign of security. I would suggest that long lines are a sign of inefficiency or lack of staff. From observation I note that about one in three or four bags get manually searched and that sharp metal objects down to a 1 inch pocket knife or razorblade are detected. Electronic equipment belonging to suspicious looking people (e.g. me) is frequently swabbed and the swab then tested for explosive residue and so on. Now whether or not this is sufficient is hard to say, since there have been neither been reports of arrests nor hijack or bomb attempts since the shoebomber, but I believe it is in fact quite good enough, something I regularly demonstrate by flying once every other week or so.
Dr D also comes out in favour of the EU, which is rather odd:
The Europeans have to date been loathe to cede any national security powers to the EU. Shortly after the van Gogh murder Deutsche Welle reported on the problems caused by the wide ranging mix of police powers found in the Union.
God forbid that a European should lecture a US citizen on the merits of states rights and the like, but that is what we are seeing here. There is a problem with immigration (especially right now thanks to the stupid Spanish Socialists) but a strong case can be made that the EU's centralization has made things worse not better. Bureaucrats like the idea of nice centralized command and control structures with paper empires of scurrying underlings and large budgets but these don't actually contribute greatly to action. Action means the intelligence services, police and judiciaries sharing information and then arresting and prosecuting where appropriate. On the whole the Europeans are doing this, more so it seems to me than the US is doing (at least that's what I pick up from reading sites like Michelle Malkin). Part of my expertise in in designing scalable computer systems and networks. Generally speaking one big database is less effiicent than many small ones, and one big database owned by a government is in my experience always less efficient than many small ones. I'd suggest Dr. D look at fixing the US's catch and release immigration issues before worrying about how we do things in Europe.
PS In rereading I looks like I'm criticising the entirity of Dr D's article. I'm not. He is absolutely correct that certain parts of the European elite seem utterly unable to grasp the threat, however (fortunately) they don't seem to be the ones running the security services.