Gijs de Vries quotes

You can't get closer to the heart of national sovereignty than national security and intelligence services. (Gijs de Vries)
In intelligence work, there are limits to the amount of information one can share. Confidentiality is essential.
Gijs de Vries
In situations of military conflict, civil strife, lawlessness, bad governance, and human rights violations, terrorists find it easier to hide, train and prepare their attacks.
Gijs de Vries
We are familiar with terrorism. But indiscriminate, cross-border, religiously motivated terrorism is new.
Gijs de Vries
If you exchange information internationally, you must strengthen data protection. Those are two sides of the same coin.
Gijs de Vries
Police forces collect information to be used in a public court to get people convicted. Security services gather information that does not necessarily lead to people being prosecuted and in many cases needs to remain confidential.
Gijs de Vries
If information ends up in the wrong hands, the lives of people very often are immediately at risk.
Gijs de Vries
Europe has a long and tragic history of mostly domestic terrorism.
Gijs de Vries
We still lack a global definition of terrorism.
Gijs de Vries
Terrorists always have the advantage of surprise.
Gijs de Vries
The European Borders Agency in Warsaw has been created to help border forces in Europe cooperate more. (Gijs de Vries)
Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
Gijs de Vries
The central role in the fight against terrorism is with national authorities.
Gijs de Vries
The majority of the world's Muslims do not believe that terrorism is a legitimate strategy or that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
Gijs de Vries
If you combat an international phenomenon, it is indispensable to share information internationally.
Gijs de Vries
It's important that we work very closely with moderate Muslim forces locally, nationally and internationally.
Gijs de Vries
Muslim organisations tend to have a low level of organisation. The communities in Europe are quite diverse.
Gijs de Vries
In the fight against terrorism, national agencies keep full control over their police forces, security and intelligence agencies and judicial authorities.
Gijs de Vries
There are no automatic links between poverty and terrorism. Among millions of poor people in the world, only a few turn to terrorism.
Gijs de Vries
The key to tackling Islamist fundamentalism and terrorism from the Islamist community is in the hands of moderate Muslims.
Gijs de Vries
The idea is to have global standards. There is so much travel that if you just had a regional standard, it would probably ultimately have to be changed. (Gijs de Vries)
The violent radicals do not legitimately represent the overwhelming majority of the world's Muslims.
Gijs de Vries
I remain optimistic. What we've seen in Europe and the rest of the world is that freedom has a much stronger attraction than radical fundamentalism.
Gijs de Vries
I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.
Gijs de Vries
Terrorists have failed in what is arguably al Qaida's most important objective - to trigger revolutions.
Gijs de Vries