We don't need to make "terrorism" a special case. The number of deaths due to terrorist activity in the West amounts to a rounding error on the roster of ways people die. We already have the tools and means to deal with it, we just don't seem to be using them. We do, however, need to counter the effort of governments to use terrorism as a pretense for their attacks on civil liberties.

The response to terrorism seems to demand ever increasing surveillance, collaboration between tech companies and intelligence agencies to undermine user privacy, militarizing of police forces, limiting free speech and political expression, control of the media (including social media), extrajudicial detainment and murder on a global scale.

And yet, every time there is an attack, it seems there's a clear and obvious trail of evidence leading to the conspirators that was ignored, which could have been followed up on by existing methods.

Is it the case that terrorists are just that good or that governments are only pretending to fight them in order to justify authoritarian power grabs?