What can the government do to prevent terrorist attacks?

What can the government do to prevent terrorist attacks?

Erroll Southers (Former Deputy Director of the California Department of Homeland Security) gives expert video advice on: What kinds of weapons do terrorists like to use?; How are terrorist bombs typically used?; How likely am I to be a victim of a terrorist bomb? and more...

There are two main apparatus in effect to stop a bomb attack. The first is intelligence, where we gather enough to identify potential, would-be attackers. The second is when we are able to detect, deter attackers from planning or executing that threat, or that attack. Terrorist attacks are only successful to the point that they can survey a target, perform reconnaissance on it, and rehearse. That means going to the target repeatedly. What we've done now, in terms of the government, is stood up apparatus in the way of closed circuit television, training, a lot of software technology out there that recognizes license plates and things like that, that we can see repeat people at a location that don't belong there. You may recall the bombing on the Khobar Towers. We believe that those three attackers visited Khobar forty times. Ten of those times in the same car. So, had we had apparatus in place that would have recognized these three guys, and that car ten times, we may have had enough to say "We should take a look at them, and an investigation should be conducted and maybe they're somebody we want to stop." So intelligence on the one hand, and then hardware/software on the other hand to detect those surveillance activities, and that's the most successful way, most effective way, to stop a bombing from happening.