Effectively he&#x27;s saying &#x27;If I had had my hands free these attacks might not have happened&#x27;, and that&#x27;s several bridges too far in my opinion. There is no proof that it would have made a difference, in fact with the tools currently at his disposal given the scope of these attacks it is fairly clear <i>it just doesn&#x27;t work</i>.<p>Those terrorist plots (real ones, not ones all but executed by the authorities) that were foiled were foiled either by coincidence or by personal bravery of one or two people that happened to be accidentally on the scene.<p><i>Maybe</i>, I&#x27;ll concede that much, if a total surveillance state were operational where each and every one of us had a continuous cops eye following us attacks like these could be prevented. But that&#x27;s in my opinion not world worth living in. Open societies are vulnerable to small numbers of assholes working in a coordinated fashion. And that&#x27;s something that will be very hard to fix without changing that society for ever so let&#x27;s not run down that path before the victims of these crimes are even in the ground and think things over for a bit.