BMF CONFERENCE 2019 KEEPING A LID ON TERROR
Richard Walton, a counter terrorism expert, shared some of his experience and lessons in keeping the terrorist threat in check across the globe.
When Richard Walton started out on the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism unit, it was 1989 and the Provisional IRA was very active in London. “At the time, we had seven floors of officers dealing with Irish terrorism and one desk dealing with international terrorism, including Islamist terrorism,” he told delegates. “Now we have 50,000 officers dealing with Islamist terrorism and one desk dealing with Irish. Times change and threats change.”
Walton shared some images which showed a sense of where the main threats are coming from. “Terrorism thrives in largely ungoverned and ungovernable places, for example, Somalia and Boko Haram.” That said, he explained that there are globally networked terrorist organisations who can project their terror around the world: “For example: Sri Lanka. Who would have thought that Sri Lanka would have been hit like that?” Walton said that the difference between what he does and what other businesses do concerns the consequences of getting it wrong. “When we get it wrong in my world people die, sometimes lots of them. As far as I am concerned, the only performance indicator that counts is for there to be no attacks. Where there are attacks we see failure. The only success is an absence of terrorism.”
Walton says that there is a growth of all forms of extremism across the world, driven by social media. The unintended consequence of the ability to connect round the world is the turbo charge that it puts on connectivity so that that far right, far left, neo Nazi groups, Islamist, all sorts of extremist groups can contact and connect with each other. “We will also see environmental terrorism at some point driven by social media,” he said. Walton talked about the lessons learned from the 7th July 2005 bombings in London. “This was a very bad day at the office. After this we learned. We interviewed 20k people: everyone and anyone who had ever met any of the perpetrators to try and find where the opportunities were for us to prevent the attacks. We realised that we had to be in listening mode. I hate the phrase ‘we can’t stop every attack’, it’s defeatist. I’d rather say, we can prevent them all if we are good enough.”
Post 2007, counter terrorism units were built round the country and Walton said that there wasn’t another attack until 2013. “Gunner Lee Rigby was killed, by a common criminal who got radicalised. That was another devastating day for us. What did we learn from this: that communication in this global world can powerfully influence young
people. That terrorism can be infectious. That when there are terrorist attacks those who are radicalised almost feel empowered to do likewise.”
In 2012, just after London had held the Olympic Games, Walton said it became apparent that the ISIS caliphate was enticing youngsters out of the UK by social media. “I cannot stress enough the power of social media for good and bad,” he said. “We need to make sure it is force for good and use it correctly.”
Social media can empower bad people to do bad things (aside: but can empower good people to do good things cf findingmike DIYSOS)
Possibly the next big area for concern is cyber-terrorism, Walton said. “Everyone is talking about cyber dangers at the moment. State sponsored-cyber is the new frontier for attacks. You may think that it doesn’t affect you,” he told delegates, before pointing out that there currently exists the capability of taking down every single business in the room. “Unless you have cyber defence in place, this could happen to you,” he said. “And most of that defence has to be concentrated on your people, rather than fancy software. You won’t solve the issues yourself, but you will need to get people in who understand it. And you also need to need to teach your people to manage their information properly, to regularly change their passwords etc.”
Thus far, Walton, said, terrorists thus don’t like cyber because they like to kill lots of people with lots of other people watching, but there are cyber criminals out there who will.”
The best way to defeating terrorism is to talk to people, Walton said. “Recently 22 serious terrorist attacks have ben prevented by the actions of MI5 and the Counter-Terrorism Unit and policing at Scotland Yard. We are very, very good at this but when one gets through it is a calamity.”
He finished with a plea to the building industry to think about design and aesthetics when coming up with new security measures, such as the bollards on London Bridge. “Please come up with ideas to make these bollards beautifully. We see concrete bollards everywhere across London now but they are ugly. Secured by Design is a really important principle in terms of secure buildings, but please also make it beautiful.” BMJ
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www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net July 2019
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