Policing Terror

Secrecy, as a value and set of attendant practices, is engrained into the conduct of both terrorism and counter-terrorism. As Georg Simmel writing over a century ago noted, secrecy affords both protection and power. Thus from the point-of-view of actors motivated to engage mass violence against noncombatants in pursuance of a political cause, secrecy is required to successfully plot, plan and prosecute their acts, and to circumvent those agencies and agents who might seek to interdict and intercept them (Black 2004).2 Secrecy is also threaded through the methodologies and cultures of governmental agencies tasked to prevent, detect and disrupt acts and actors that are labelled ‘terrorist’. Keeping key practices in the shadows, it is argued, is a necessary condition for sustaining the effectiveness of counter-terrorism measures. This shroud of secrecy amplifies the sinister power that is regularly assigned to both terrorist acts and counter-terrorist agencies. As will be discussed throughout this chapter, as a consequence of this a considerable amount of the effort of counter-terrorism agencies is devoted to trying to penetrate the secrecy of their adversaries in order that they may achieve tactical advantage. They are engaged in an ongoing and dynamic contest to render visible what their opponents do not want them to know.