[nailer]

Agreed, smart criminals will just use private channels.

But what about dumb criminals? From what I read both the London Bridge attackers and Manchester bomber are dumb as dogs__t. They'd probably use whatsapp even if it wasn't private simply because it's popular.

(I support private communication, and think not being able to catch some criminals is a reasonable price, but many others do not)

[Blaiz0r]

For both recent attacks the authorities already had information on them, they were already on watch lists.

[freeflight]

That's pretty much always been the case with most of these attacks. Which is the very same reason why I think that "more surveillance/data collection" will make the problem only worse.

As is, many government agencies databases seem to be filled to the brim with false-positives, making it impossible to spot the actual dangerous people among the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of "suspects".

Maybe they believe that more data will make it easier to figure out who the really dangerous people are? But that whole idea is still based on concepts which pretty much boil down to precognition of how individual humans gonna act, an impossibility.

Guess a few people took Minority Report a tad bit too seriously and didn't get the message at all.

[CaptSpify]

If you are having trouble finding a needle in a haystack, adding more hay is a bad idea.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9_PjdU3Mpo

[freeflight]

That's a good one, reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdIA0jeW-24

[pbhjpbhj]

They were probably on watch lists at least in part due to the ease of monitoring their communications.