Terrorist activities have been on the rise over the past years. In the wake of Islamic extremist activities, many groups like the Al Shabab and Boko Haram, have also escalated their activities. Their activities have increasingly become a global threat. The term generates a lot of social and political activities because of its ability to induce strong emotions, inspire social practices as well as affecting the legal, political, and cultural arena. As a result, terrorism has become an object of fear, hatred, surprise, political and religious identity. Even so, there is a gaping gap between the relationship between religious and political identity and these acts of terrorism.
All the countries in the world are always on the lookout for these terrorists. Terrorists have the ability to disrupt life and the way people carry out the activities. Most notably, elections have been disrupted in USA, Spain, and Australia. The shooting in Orlando and the Nice Massacre were terrorist activities inspired by the Islamic states terrorist group. The growth in these terrorist groups has been largely attributed to the increasing cases of radicalization of civilians. The social media and the internet, for example, have been heavily linked to terrorists because they provide an easy and safe channel for these criminals to radicalize and preach their message of violence and extremism.
As a result of these vast criminal activities, world countries have adopted strategies. Marie and Jeroen (2008) in their journal mention the important strategy of a global corporation which has been adopted by countries to combat these terrorists. Apart from global corporation, there are also new domestic anti-terrorism security measures which include intensive surveillance and capacity building in the security forces. Finding and confiscating weapons and explosives is a critical step for keeping people safe. Intelligence systems working on the ground operate to ensure that terror organizations do not have access to illegal weapons. These strategies and much more have been used to combat terrorist activities.
Detecting and arresting terrorists is a common strategy which has been adopted by world countries. A string of advanced intelligence mechanisms has been put in place. The primary objective being to detect and uncover unusual behaviors. Before the occurrence of terrorist activities, terrorist groups potentially portray unusual patterns that can disclose terror groups or individual terrorists. The process of thwarting such terrorist plots proceeds in three major steps of finding an initial clue that will alert law enforcement officers, finding sufficient evidence to justify the allocation of law enforcement personnel, and finally conducting a full-scale investigation. Carafano (2009) rightly notes that dealing with threats passed by terrorists means understanding those problems. In accordance to that, it is imperative that security forces build capacity that allows them to detect and prevent crime from happening.
Despite the fact that all the strategies used counter-terrorism, some of the means are not justifiable. A perfect example is the abuse of power and office by front line servant when they invade privacy. As earlier mentioned, the process of detection involves the process of collecting reliable information which will point out planned terrorist attacks. Terrorist activities pose a serious threat to the safety of the people. Marieke (2012) asserts that when pursuing terrorists, it is important to widen the scope to identify criminal defendants and prosecute them before a crime is committed. Consequently, front line servants are likely to ambush residential areas and private property in attempts to secure evidence which shall be used to prosecute the criminals.
Paul (2016) talks about the governments use of anti-terror power to arrest criminals or access evidence that would help security forces to foil terrorist attacks. When front line officers get intelligence of possible terrorist activities, they always seem to overlook privacy rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Clancy (2010) asserts that the attribute of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution provides for the security of a person, houses, papers, and effects against intrusion by the government. However, there have been incidences where front line officers have gone ahead to acquire evidence from people, houses, and other private effects without proper authorization. Such instances set a clear example where police officers have wrongfully obtained evidence by violating privacy.
The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 gave birth to the practice of taking DNA samples from suspected or criminals. The courts have also routinely given consent to the collection DNA samples which shall later be used to analyze forensic evidence in a crime scene. The same practice has been extended to fighting terrorist activities. Law enforcing officers have routinely collected samples from suspected terrorists upon arrest. However, this has not always been upheld since in some cases, frontline officers have used force to acquire DNA with the intention of using it later in court to prove criminal liability. Opponents have raised a concern of this method since the collected DNA can be misused since it has genetic information of an individual.
Silvestri (2011) presents a case scenario where DNA samples were used to convict a criminal. Years back, it was not possible to use DNA samples as evidence in a case. However, with the modern technology front line officers can now acquire DNA samples which are later used to present a case against a suspected criminal. The law provides that one can agree to go for questioning but can refuse to offer their DNA without a court order sanctioning the collection of data. However, the moment one seat on a chair, a lot of DNA is shed. Police officers later take swabs of the cells and analyze the DNA. Such a trend is very common in fighting terrorist activities. According to the Fourth Amendment, such evidence should not be admissible for use because it violates the right of protecting a person against irrational searches and seizures.
Collecting intelligence information is a very critical aspect of fighting terrorist activities. To get the intelligence that police officers need, they at times have to detain and interrogate suspects. As provided by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, a suspect can choose not to give information. As a way of obtaining the information, police officers resort to torture and violence as a way of getting the suspects to talk. According to Pope (2015), the American Psychological Association (APA) approved scientific methods that could be used to acquire information from suspects of 9-11. However, the interrogation policies suggested do not involve the use of torture.
The Law does not justify the use of torture as means of combating terrorism. The Geneva Conventions prohibits the use of violence, torture, and life-threatening acts in attempts to obtain information. The United Nations Convention also called for the ban of torture on human beings. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also prohibits the use of torture on human beings for the sake of obtaining information. Stephen (2007) provides a commentary about the use of torture to acquire information. The commentary makes it clears that the use of force, torture, and other cruel acts are prohibited as these actions degrade human beings. Paul (2009) further affirm that the use of torture is has been eliminated from the penal code and investigatory practices. Using torture to acquire information in combating terrorism is not warranted by the law and should not be applied by front-line officers.
Terrorists have continuously changed their strategies of how they carry out attacks in the countries that they seek to attack. In retaliation, some countries have also gone to hit back the terrorists by bombing their bases and the countries that they perceive to be providing safe havens for these terrorists. Many studies have been conducted to establish the possibility of using retaliation as a way of deterring and eliminating crime. From a set data comprising of countries that had retaliated back to terrorist activities, the analysis indicated that there was no reliable evidence to show that retaliation did not offer the projected results. An analysis of the successive retaliatory acts, in fact, showed that terrorist activities increased after governments engaged terrorists through war. As a matter of fact, of the seven retaliatory attacks six faced increased attacks from the terrorist groups. Having made that observation, it is prudent for authorities to avoid retaliation and seek other means of addressing terrorism.
Terrorists are acutely aware of human rights set by the United Nations. In this regard, they carry out their activities in the confines of cities which has huge populations of innocent civilians. That makes it very hard to carry out attacks on these terrorists as that will amount to human rights violation. Sergio (2007) points to the case of Israeli forces which carry out attacks on different Palestinian terror groups. It is worth noting that the Israeli troops have for a long time failed to safeguard their territory because of the issue of Palestinian human rights. More than often, the Israeli forces have violated human rights as they struggle to fight the terror groups. The case scenario presented above points out that retaliatory attacks cannot be used to counter terrorist activities effectively.
Terrorism has become a global problem because of the security threat that it poses to world countries. In the recent past, terrorist activities have escalated including in some of the most powerful countries like USA and France. Consequently, governments and security forces have been compelled to come with strategies which they can detect, thwart or reduce the scale of the attacks. The terrain of fighting terrorists has also extensively grown with the social media and the internet. As a result, strategies have been changed to adapt to the rapid mutation of terrorism. As much as the security forces are seeking to reduce and finally eliminate criminal activities, the strategies used cannot be effectively adopted in the global setup because of the social, legal, and political issues that they bring. Human rights are likely to be violated if some of these strategies are used. There is also the issue of violating privacy rights when collecting evidence to be used to link suspects to terrorism. All these factors cannot be violated as they contravene human rights.
Reference
De Goede, M. (2012). Speculative security: The politics of pursuing terrorist monies. U of Minnesota Press.
Carafano, J. (2009). Re-learning the lessons from the thwarted Detroit airline bombing. Heritage Foundation web blog. Retrieved April, 7, 2010.
Anderson, P. (2016). Fighting'terrorism', repressing democracy: surveillance and resistance in the UK. Browser Download This Paper.
Clancy, T. K. (2009). What Does the Fourth Amendment Protect: Property, Privacy, or Security.
Silvestri, M. (2011). Naturally Shed DNA: The Fourth Amendment Implications in the Trial of Intimate Information We All Cannot Help but Leave Behind. U. Balt. L. Rev., 41, 165.
Catignani, S. (2007). The security imperative in counterterror operations: The Israeli fight against suicidal terror. Terrorism and Political Violence, 17(1-2), 245-264.
Pope, K. S. (2015). Are the American Psychological Associations Detainee Interrogation Policies Ethical and Effective?. Zeitschrift fur Psychologie.
Behnke, S. H., & Koocher, G. P. (2007). Commentary on Psychologists and the Use of Torture in Interrogations. Analyses...
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