to be fair the French DGSE (their equivalent of MI6) have been dealing with these risks for 30 years if not more as well as surveillance / countersurveillance operations of various kinds.
When I was listening to French radio as a high school student (so I could improve my French) they were always reporting on some or other terrorist attack; although back then the middle eastern ones tended to stay in areas of FR geographically closer to that part of the world than Paris; and it was often the French shooting at one another for a variety of reasons. Some time during the 1990s when the EU arrived the reporting on these internal incidents was toned down using “privacy laws” to hide the bad news.
DGSE had most likely been doing as much behind the scenes as they possibly could; if anything I have some sympathy for them and the French people as a whole as they are being hammered from both sides and used as “useful idiots” by Americans and given begrudging support by UK who is using this incident to push through all sorts of surveillance laws.
Even if DGSE could decrypt everything they are unlikely to be able or willing to lock down all of Paris on a weekend as that would be handing the terrorists a victory anyway by doing so.
France has been and always will be a target due to its history with colonialism in Algeria and the not insignificant fact that 7-10% of its citizens are Muslims (much more than I had thought) – at least during times of economic stability and prosperity and in the more middle class areas they co-exist relatively peacefully. unfortunately any terrorist group or extremist politicians who thrive on spreading fear amongst religious/ethnic divides can exploit this.
in FR and some bits of BE entire suburbs (banlieues) have become ghettoes of various immigrants and are basically run by young men who are holding their entire neighbourhoods to ransom by various gang activity. The Police are mistrusted there by everyone and language barriers often used to keep this out of the news unless there is a major riot so the scale of the problem goes unnoticed- the tendency to play down bad news (as some of these areas are close to prominent places dependent on tourism) doesn’t help matters either.
It is from these places militants recruit their “boots on the ground”.
Catching and deterring them will require as always a combination of old fashioned Police work as well as working out why what are often middle class European citizens whose extended families have had some level of integration into their “new” countries culture as well as ancestral cultures would want to commit such crime in the first place (and it should start with properly investigating how “petty crime” might lead to bigger misdeeds if not addressed)
That of course takes time and costs a lot more money than just switching off everyones encrypt in case “some terrorists may use it” and/or blindly following whatever USA tell us to (some of them are as bad and have worse hidden agendas couched in “economic liberalism” than the other extremists who attack Europe)
French people [whatever skin colour, religion they may have] should be encouraged to be proud there has not been more bloodshed given the recent history and they have held on to some semblance of democracy being closer to the frontline than many other EU nations. They should not have their grief hijacked by other countries political aims over and above what is required to keep the EU safe.
