zlacker

> Basically, the French security system has been revealed as completely ineffective.

How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society?

>>sosbor+(OP)
> How can a country possibly prevent these things while still maintaining a free society?

You can't even prevent them when not being a free society. Its not like terrorism only occurs in free societies.

>>sosbor+(OP)
By making the secret services work for their money on real problems, instead of fretting about tapping media pirates and suchlike. By having a foreign policy that does not rely on military intervention at the drop of a hat. By not starting fires all over the place. The list is long and well-known.

>>sosbor+(OP)
They can't; even the not free societies - think prisons - are not safe. People that want to do Bad Things will do them. Even if they didn't have guns or weapons, they could've - for example - get enough people into a dinner party or restaurant, have everyone grab a fork, and start stabbing people in the eye.

Terrorism doesn't need weaponry. The only deterrent would be to read people's minds, and you've probably watched Minority Report and other such dystopian scenarios. It's something that needs to be solved at the root, and TBF I don't believe it can be fixed.

>>toyg+v
I don't think any secret service could prevent any isolated individual to make at home, say, Molotov cocktails, and throw them by car in a crowd.

>>S4M+j2
But these weren't isolated individuals. This was an organised network with grenades and assault rifles and the training to handle them.

This is not a Breivik, or a "Shoe Bomber" Reid; this is '70s-style, organised, cross-border terrorism -- the sort of which "we" were supposed to be good at handling by now.

>>Cthulh+11
I'm a bit more optimistic, I think it can be fixed but it will take many years (decades).

>>Cthulh+11

  Terrorism doesn't need weaponry. 

Indeed. Even if you deem well-coordinated attacks with just edged weapons (like the fictional ones in "The Following") unlikely, note that the Multiple-Victim public homicide with the most fatalities in US history used not a single firearm.

(and I'm not talking about 9/11, although it could count as such as well)