TEL AVIV – In a troubling turn of events as Europe faces an unprecedented terrorist threat, an alleged French boycott of Israeli technology may have prevented the use of proprietary, terrorist-tracking software that could possibly have thwarted recent attacks in Paris and Belgium.
That disclosure was made by an Israeli security source speaking on Monday to Fox News.
According to the source, shortly after the January 7, 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, French authorities rejected an Israeli offer of software that could have “connected” the dots to uncover Islamic terrorist cells embedded in Europe.
The offer was made directly to the Directorate-General for Internal Security, the head of France’s main intelligence agency, the source said.
“French authorities liked it, but the official came back and said there was a higher-level instruction not to buy Israeli technology,” FoxNews.com quoted the well-placed Israeli counter-terror specialist as saying. “The discussion just stopped.”
Continued FoxNews.com:
The Israeli source declined to name the company or detail the technology, which has been shared with the U.S. and other nations on good terms with Israel, other than to say it scans databases from multiple agencies and Interpol and pinpoints “high-risk” people. But he believes it could have given French authorities a chance at stopping the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks in Paris, and possibly the coordinated bombings in Brussels that killed 32 on March 22.
Fox News further quoted the source as saying, “Government agencies struggling to foil terror attacks need access to technologies that allow them to connect their data fragments, making it possible to handle daily data challenges.”
“With this system, all data can then be easily navigated, processed and represented by employing a set of powerful analytic tools and unique algorithms,” the source added.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.