Should information on terrorist threats be released to the public?

[Jom]

I was just reading through the most recent news report on Germany's response to the terrorist threat that it is facing at the moment and this paragraph in particular struck me:

The Der Spiegel report says an informer, who lives abroad, contacted German authorities to warn that a six-strong militant cell was planning an attack in February or March. The informer said two members of the cell were already in Berlin.

Surely this sort of information should not be released to the press? If the terrorist cell is informed that they have been discovered, then they will abandon their current plans and adapt their scheme. Would it not be far better to keep this information secret and therefore catch the terrorists in the act, convict them, and thus remove the threat in its entirety?

If this information was not given to Der Spiegel through official channels and leaked, for example, does the paper not have a moral obligation not to publish due to the reasons outlined above? Or are they driven more by the desire for profit due to the anticipated sales figures that such a headline would produce? Is it perhaps a sense of "the public have a right to know"? Do they? Is this not simply heightening the sense of unease in Germany, which can be said to be a goal of terrorism for the very word itself implies the spread of terror and dread.

Source for the article in its entirety: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11809213

[Plant]

I was just reading through the most recent news report on Germany's response to the terrorist threat that it is facing at the moment and this paragraph in particular struck me:


Surely this sort of information should not be released to the press? If the terrorist cell is informed that they have been discovered, then they will abandon their current plans and adapt their scheme. Would it not be far better to keep this information secret and therefore catch the terrorists in the act, convict them, and thus remove the threat in its entirety?

If this information was not given to Der Spiegel through official channels and leaked, for example, does the paper not have a moral obligation not to publish due to the reasons outlined above? Or are they driven more by the desire for profit due to the anticipated sales figures that such a headline would produce? Is it perhaps a sense of "the public have a right to know"? Do they? Is this not simply heightening the sense of unease in Germany, which can be said to be a goal of terrorism for the very word itself implies the spread of terror and dread.

Source for the article in its entirety: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11809213

Why assume that there will be a "heightening the sense of unease in Germany"?
The goal of terrorism is not to simply cause unease among the populace, as even during WW2, mass bombings unable to break the will of the civilian population, in all three countries which recieved it.

The question is whether liberty and freedoms should be taken away for security? It is a grey area from my point of view, but when a goveernment has the ability to do so, it has been shown that they will exploit it.

The bbc links itself to this article, which has more in depth analysis.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...730377,00.html

[xcorps]

Surely this sort of information should not be released to the press?

Headline: Government secrecy leads to blood in the streets

[Jom]

Part of the goal of terrorism is to disrupt the normal day-to-day workings of a country and to spread fear. You just have to look at the etymology of the term to see this. If the security services have concrete information about a pending attack, what good does releasing it into the public domain serve, except to heighten anxiety and make the terrorists aware that their organisation has been infiltrated?

Of course, in asking that question I do throw up an interesting argument for the release of this kind of information as it leads to unease amongst the terrorists themselves: that their organisation has been compromised and that they must root out the mole before proceeding with any other plans. Whilst this may cause disorganisation and mistrust amongst the terrorist organisation, I would have thought it better to simply wait and use this information to secure a successful foiling of the attack and therefore capture all of those responsible. Which do you feel to be the most effective approach? Presumably the security services believe the latter to be very useful or they would not allow the dissemination of this sort of intelligence to the wider public.

[Plant]

Part of the goal of terrorism is to disrupt the normal day-to-day workings of a country and to spread fear. You just have to look at the etymology of the term to see this.

I'm going to take Germany as an individual case. It depends on which you mean by day to day workings of the country. If by country you mean the lives of the people then, the day to day workings of the country has not been drastically affected before and after the announcement. As far as I can tell, the Germans are simply going about it's business in exactly the same way, albiet with higher visible security in the relevant buildings, which has not changed since the announcement.

[High Chunker Greens]

Surely this sort of information should not be released to the press? If the terrorist cell is informed that they have been discovered, then they will abandon their current plans and adapt their scheme. Would it not be far better to keep this information secret and therefore catch the terrorists in the act, convict them, and thus remove the threat in its entirety?

Another way of looking at this is that "prevention is better than a cure". The cure being the terrorists being found out and convicted. Surely preventing a terrorist attack is a lot better than stopping it just before the attack happens? Think also of how bad it would look if the attempt to stop the terrorists was held up and the attack actually went through. The secret services would look like idiots if the press found out that the secret services knew the attack was going to happen, and it was published over national TV and newspapers.