> Perhaps technology companies and encryption would be a bigger deal if terrorists were more competent but at the moment their opsec seems poor with many foiled plots

Exactly, attackers usually have piss poor OpSec but the police is even more incompetent. That’s why even for the few successful attacks it’s usually later reported “the attacker was known to the police” or “under surveillance by security services “, and yet… not sure how more surveillance would help, it seems they already have more leads than they can act upon.

(Disclaimer: I don’t know how many unsuccessful attacks there are, so maybe they’re not as incompetent as it seems from outside.)