CJ 450 Counterterrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

CJ 450 Counterterrorism - Essay Example Arguably there are various reasons for terrorism attacks and hence each motive requires different approach to tackling terrorism. Some of the reasons include political conflict, religious clashes, gaining publicity and in some cases divine instruction to conduct terrorist attacks. (Victoroff, 2006). The terrorist believe that such motives justify their actions although many will agree that there is no justification to terrorism whichever way we look at it. For example the September 11 attack was fuelled by religious motives and political motives. When governments or those in authority understand the motives behind terrorist attacks then they can forge on in their efforts to reduce these tensions and dissatisfactions in an intelligent way hence counter terrorism. It seems that counter terrorism is a tactic of warfare. These efforts are usually retaliation with equal or greater force as applied y terrorist in order to disempower them. Often than not counterterrorism efforts will include the military and the police force that wage war against these organizations. Although the idea is to fight crime, innocent civilians may suffer in the process. The role of due process in counter terrorism is that both parties feel that they are entitled to use force in fighting for their ideologies (political or otherwise). The victims feel a need to avenge wrongs and in effect the problem doubles in the long run. In fact one of the implications of characterizing terrorists as the enemy rather than mere criminals is that it breeds ground for wa r. Question 2 Due to the sophistication of technology surveillance has changed from the traditional way to a new surveillance. The new system of surveillance includes monitoring inside activities of terrorist groups through satellites monitoring, or spying. Additionally, eavesdropping communication, tapping wire money transfers to trace terrorist funding etc. (Clarke & Newman, 2006). The ideal surveillance technique would be one where the counter terrorism units would gain clandestine sources within the terrorist groups or cells but this situation is almost impossible since these groups tend to be so close knit and bond by strong allegiances. (Clarke & Newman, 2006). It seems that the shift from traditional surveillance methods to the new type has had problematic effect in the civil liberties of the people of United States in that their communication is often been intercepted as the authorities try to trace terrorist linkages. In this light privacy has been infringed on. Additionally, surveillance has had negative connotation to discrimination especially for communities that are associated with terrorist groups. For instance in some place Muslims and Arabs are frown upon and are seen as potential threats due to association with al-Qaeda and Taliban groups. More to that the frequent travel advisories and terrorist alerts instill fear in the lives of people hence multiplying the power that terrorist groups have over the people in US. This denies such communities freedom of movements and enjoyment of life. The quality of life has been reduced to that of slavery like nature. It therefore seems that the counter terrorism efforts have to strike a balance between protecting the liberties of the people and preventing further terrorist attacks. (Meggle, 2005). Notably in order to achieve this all stakeholders have to echo what is important to them. Freedom or security. Nonetheless, even