What measures are used to control terrorism?

Answer 1

There are many measures in place to control terrorism.

Law

The law, obviously, makes any act of terrorism or threat of terrorism illegal.

Terrorism is an extremely serious offence and all reports are taken extremely seriously. Terror suspects can be held in custody longer by law enforcement than murder suspects.

In most countries, particularly Europe, even stockpiling material that can be used to make explosives is enough evidence of terrorism intentions.

Espionage

NATO members often perform spy measures on terror suspects and known terror training grounds. Information is gathered by means of video and sound which is used to prevent planned terror attacks on Allied and international soil. Espionage also allows us to discover how the terror faction operates and where they get their funding and materials from.

Special Operations

NATO special forces, particularly the British SAS, British Royal Commandos and American SEALs often perform "hit" missions on terror locations and terror suspects. Usually to disable a terror cell to prevent imminent attack.

They also perform missions to sabotage supplies such as weapons and destroy their means of funding (usually drug cultivating, so special forces would destroy/burn drug crops). They also perform "snatch" missions (kidnapping a high-ranking terrorist for interrogation) and rescue missions in hostage situations.

Morale Dampening

The Allies occasionally perform missions to lower the morale of terror forces. This may include sabotaging supplies, sabotaging funds, starving the terrorists by preventing food entering camps, poisoning water supplies, Propaganda and assassinating key leadership figures.

International Cooperation

Improved diplomacy with international countries boosts intelligence sharing and support with preventing terrorism. Diplomacy with the governments of countries where terrorists are known to hide is crucial, for many reasons, including permission to drop bombs on the country to eliminate threats and requests for extradition of arrested terror suspects.

Education

Educating people on the negative sides of terrorism helps to reduce the number of terror recruits and encourages people to report suspected terror activity.

Terrorism is usually committed due to the terrorists having "incorrect" beliefs that their victims wronged them in some way (brainwashing). Educating removes their brainwashing.

Big Brother

In today's modern world, it is easier to keep track of people and analyse them. This is called "big brother".

With CCTV in virtually every developed city, on average everybody appears on a camera every 4 minutes (2 minutes for London, the most heavily CCTV'd city on the planet).

Mobile phones and devices such as laptops, iPads and so on provide authorities with a way to trace an individual in minutes using GPS.

Unmanned spy drones and spy satellites make it easier to analyse suspects.

"Eye In The Sky"

Technology in the air is constantly keeping watch over known terror locations and tracing high-value terror suspects. This is achieved by spy drones.

Spy drones are unmanned and carry equipment capable of collecting information about locations and people. If they are destroyed, no lives are lost since there is nobody on board, the information won't be lost because it is instantly beamed back to the controllers via satellite.

Spy satellites can be used to spy on movements and locations too.

Similarly, air force gunship planes, also known as "flying fortresses", such as the AC-130 have the ability to spy from great distances and attack them without being noticed. This is an incredibly effective method of leadership assassination as they will never see a missile fired at them from an AC-130 until it hits them.

War

After the September 11th attacks on the United States- the US, UK, UN and NATO officially declared war on global terrorism.

War is usually the last measure used to control terrorism, either when all other measures fail or when immediate control is needed to prevent immediate threat to innocent lives.

War is used as suppression and destroy method to either disrupt the terrorists or destroy them entirely. It also helps the countries to build up their forces and resistance to fight the terrorists themselves (such as in Afghanistan).