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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Terrorism will cast a continuing shadow over future generations and government electronic surveillance is a small price to pay to combat it, a leading historian said Wednesday [phys.org], a day after the carnage in Brussels.

British author and journalist Max Hastings gave a robust defence of electronic intelligence-gathering in what he called a new world that would never know absolute security.

"Our tolerance of electronic surveillance, subject to legal and parliamentary oversight, seems a small price to pay for some measure of security against threats that nobody—today of all days—can doubt are real," Hastings told Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club.

Twin attacks by Islamic State jihadists killed around 35 people in the Belgian capital Tuesday.

Hastings, a former war correspondent and newspaper editor, is author of 26 books mostly on military history.

His latest, "The Secret War", tells the story of behind-the-scenes intelligence operations in World War II.

Future wars "will almost certainly" be fought on similar turf.

The expert named did not explain how the current total surveillance did not prevent the Brussels attacks. In other news, he taped a "Dox me and SWAT me" sign to his own back.

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