In the June 10, 2017 edition of The Economist there are two articles on the role, or at least the potential roles and responsibilities, of internet firms in helping authorities prevent terrorist acts. The first, Terror and the Internet http://tinyurl.com/yd9tmb38 makes one point very explicit: “….internet firms are doing the jihadists’ work for them….”. Terrorists can communicate on social media right in front of Counter-terrorist officials and the encrypted messages must remain encrypted, thus remaining secret. Officials can know—to a moral certainty—that they are looking at actionable intelligence, but—in a free society—can do nothing about it.
The article essentially asks, is “…the lawless freewheeling era of the early internet over…”? The second article, “More money or more power?” http://tinyurl.com/ycmckgve pushes the question to whether law enforcement agencies need more information (see the first article), more money, or more power.
In my thriller, The Point of a Gun, Samms and her top of the U.S. government secret, rogue Counter-terrorism vigilante group solve this problem. Or, at least May Kung does. How? How do they unearth actionable intel invisible to the FBI, CIA, JSOC, NSA? And who, exactly IS Samms?
Also, see the Movie Trailer for the book on the book page on this site.