Terrorism will cast a continuing shadow over future generations and government electronic surveillance is a small price to pay to combat it, a leading historian said Wednesday, a day after the carnage in Brussels.
British author and journalist Sir Max Hastings gave a robust defence of electronic intelligence-gathering in what he called a new world that would never know absolute security.
"Our tolerance of electronic surveillance, subject to legal and parliamentary oversight, seems a small price to pay for some measure of security against threats that nobody -- today of all days -- can doubt are real," Hastings told Hong Kong's Foreign Correspondents' Club.
Twin attacks by Islamic State jihadists killed around 35 people in the Belgian capital Tuesday.
Hastings, a former war correspondent and newspaper editor, is author of 26 books mostly on military history.
His latest, "The Secret War", tells the story of behind-the-scenes intelligence operations in World War II.
Future wars "will almost certainly" be fought on similar turf.
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