By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin Financial Times Updated: 5:41 p.m. MT Aug 24, 2006 Not a day has passed without new proposals on how better to protect Germany against terrorism since last week's revelation that Islamist militants were behind a failed July 31 train bomb attack. As government officials warned that the country was not immune to attacks, it seemed "31/7" would come to be seen as the day when Germany, after Britain and Spain, finally woke up to its status as a target. But the message has not quite registered with a nation that sees the war on terror as an Anglo-American problem. As terrorism experts point out, most of the suggestions, some of which will be discussed at a meeting of Germany's state interior ministers next week, are neither new nor sensible. "Good intelligence defeats terrorism," says Rolf Tophoven, director of the Institute for terrorism research and security policy. "If you want better intelligence, you need more money and more people." When London foiled a conspiracy to blow up passenger aircraft this month, it scored an intelligence victory. July 31, by contrast, was an indictment of Berlin's anti-terror apparatus. Jörg Ziercke, head of the Federal Criminal Office (BKA), concedes it was sheer good luck that there were identical "construction flaws" in the two suitcase bombs, averting deaths on a scale unimaginable up to this day in Germany. Yet among the proposals aired this week, only one improved monitoring of the internet would involve larger intelligence budgets. Other ideas have been around for months, even years. More video cameras in stations and airports is one. Discreetly, the government was conducting feasibility studies with Deutsche Bahn, the railway operator, on the video monitoring of trains long before July 31. Another proposal the creation of a database on terror suspects accessible to all security agencies in the country was already in the coalition agreement the two ruling parties signed last November. The regional and federal authorities, which oversee the 37 agencies involved in the fight against terror, have since been bickering over whether this should be a full-text database pooling all available intelligence, or merely an index. Likewise, an amendment to anti-terrorism laws, whose enactment will now be sped up, has been making its way for months through the parliamentary pipeline. Meanwhile, a reform initiated by Otto Schily, former interior minister, to allow the BKA to investigate suspected terrorists before they commit a crime is still awaiting parliamentary approval a year later. The preventive detention of foreign extremists seems to have dropped from the agenda altogether. The applause that greeted a warning by Kurt Beck, chairman of the ruling Social Democratic Party, against "knee-jerk reactions" suggests resistance to tougher security steps remains strong. Fifty-seven years of Nazi and Communist dictatorships have spawned deep suspicion of measures that encroach on civil liberties. The law sets strict limits on cooperation between police and intelligence services and prevents the authorities collecting data about people's religious and ethnic backgrounds. As for the impact of July 31 on people's awareness of their vulnerability and of the sacrifices required in exchange for better protection, the jury is still out. The only opinion survey published since the train bomb plot on the terrorist threat was an online poll by the Die Welt daily, where 71 per cent said they favoured more video surveillance. Surveys conducted before the plot showed terrorism ranking low in the list of people's concerns. In its latest study of "Germans' fears", published a year ago, insurer R+V said 48 per cent were afraid of terrorism, making it the eighth biggest concern after lower purchasing power, unemployment, disease and the "growing rift between politicians and society". In fact, terrorism was the fear that registered the biggest drop between 2004 and 2005. The 2006 survey, which comes out in two weeks, is based on a poll conducted before July 31. Claudia Dieckmann of R+V said the insurer had decided against extending the deadline to reflect the impact of the botched attack. "Last year, we did a flash poll just after the bombings in London, but the difference in perception between before and after the attack was so minute that we did not think it was necessary this time."
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