Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, interest in counter-terrorism deepened around the globe, bringing progressive change in counter-terrorist operations and its legal systems. The United States converged its focus on counterterrorism efforts through various means such as the establishment of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the 9/11 attacks left deep-cut wounds on the pride of US security. In turn, the United States enacted the Patriot Act to strengthen the existing investigation capabilities whose shortcomings and limitations were drastically manifested during the attacks, as well as placing preventive measures under reconsideration.
The attacks and the US reaction that followed aroused strong demands among other states to tackle terrorism existent within their jurisdiction, such as the Terrorism Act mechanism implemented by England based on its longstanding counter-terrorist experiences from dealing with the Irish Republican Army (IRA), strict military policies taken by Israel in dealing with groups such as the Hezbollah, and policies taken by India (or lack thereof) in countering terrorism emerging from the Kashmir and Zammu conflict (e.g. Mumbai Terrorist Attacks), despite the difficulty in Abstract defining the concept of terrorism itself, not to mention the dilemmatic investigative approach to terrorism.
Although terrorism is yet to be fully defined, it is undeniable that one of the founding components of terrorism relies greatly on indiscriminate violence.
Not only that, every terrorist activities differ from common crimes as it is committed not for the sake of the victims, but for creating a sentiment of fear among societies of people. Numerous cases demonstrate how terrorists have targeted strategic areas where traffic is immense, and easily accessible to the public, such as government buildings, public institutions, mass transport agencies, economic and business sectors, communication facilities, and historical landmarks. The nature of these areas critically undermines counter-terrorist prevention, investigation, and reaction efforts in a practical sense, placing doubt on whether our awareness on terrorism is enough to effectively tackle the unknown. In a present-day society, the importance of counter-terrorism lies less on reaction than prevention, as the breakout of any terrorist attacks itself will have fully served its purpose of inciting fear among the public.
This in turn will require intimate interagency cooperation through effective intelligence collections and exchanges, as the initially unknown nature of terrorists necessitates the need to cooperate in processing massive flow of data that may or may not have to do with potential terrorists. Therefore, parallel to interagency cooperations, investigation agencies and intelligence counterparts should be able to delineate the extent of their responsibilities in their own respective fields, specializing in their own capacities in securing potential terrorists in advance. This will involve recognizing various critical points of access to intelligence, varying from common police activities as trivial as vehicle pull-overs to identifying other potential terrorist suspects in scenes of common crime less severe than terrorist attacks. Expanding and maintaining the role of these agencies will require legal mechanism to be established first to lay a basis for stronger intelligence gathering, and investigative capacities of Abstract relevant organs and institutions.
Along that line, preventive measures will have to be strengthened, first by strengthening the capacity of enforcement agencies through adequate training and equipment, and second by distributing these agencies to effectively tighten security on particularly sensitive entities such as embassies, airports, and high-profile personnels. On a macro-level, various military and economic measures will have to be applied, but on the premise that the use of military force should always be of last resort. Economic measures include identifying terrorist channels of financial or transportation support and disconnecting it by cooperating with local governments and other entities to impose choking strategies such as sanctions and embargoes. At the same time, empowerment of local governments which lacks adequate capacity to take control over remote regions which is being exploited as safe havens by terrorists will be crucial in tackling one of the root causes of terrorism. Economic and political aid should be invested to promote state development, which will then allow more room for local governments to gain legitimacy from their people, most of whom by lack of such legitimacy are driven towards supporting the terrorist groups which are proclaiming to build a new and better form of legitimacy in the region under Islamic rule.
In sum, this research aims to observe various counter-terrorist policies taken by a number of states around the world since the 9/11 attacks, which serve as one of the top priorities of world security today. As such, this research will undertake comprehensive comparative analyses of legal systems, reaction agencies, and preventive frameworks existent throughout a number of developed nations including the United States, with a purpose of constructing a practical counter-terrorist investigation system which effectively deals with domestic circumstances seen from a perspective of criminal policy.