Of course you do, you just don't display it on every single mainstream news channels for 2 weeks straight like we do when an attack is successful.
Just like for every other crimes, if you look for details you'll find them but they won't be given to you in national news.
But don't forget that places like GCHQ do not release information, so it would be very unusual to get "GCHQ helped identify these suspects". Here's one example where the GCHQ link was made clear (in news reporting), and it's pretty extreme.
The prosecutions are covered by the news. There is one in the UK today.
The point is that a foiled plot doesn't get reported on when it's discovered only when the offender goes to trial.
There is no public record of each arrest by the police, as an example which might help understand this.
Furthermore there will be plots that are foiled, people arrested but prosecutions dropped due to lack of evidence or something and, again, the press offices in the police or government are not mandated to distribute that news.
Can’t speak for the UK, but in the US, literally every terrorism prosecution that involved a foiled plot in the past ten years or so has involved the FBI convincing some helpless, directionless loser to do a bad thing and then arresting said loser and claiming victory against Al-Qaeda. The entire plot had been made up by the FBI.
That’s not to say the guys who agreed to said plots were blameless. That’s to say that I’ve seen zero evidence that the FBI has brought any actual, independently motivated terrorists to justice by foiling their plots.
How about the 2009 New York City Subway plot[1]? I suppose it's possible that Zazi was a patsy, but if you take the Wikipedia page at face value it seems pretty damning.
That one looks legit. I’ll still claim I was right because it was … 10 years ago. ;-)
To be clear, “patsy” is too harsh a term for what I meant. There is value in diverting the attention of people intending to do harm from real plots to fake ones invented by the FBI. However, that is not “thwarting an attack”, and in my opinion does not justify excessive surveillance.
You would ask the question "How far would he have gotten if an FBI agent hadn't got involved?" There seems to be a pattern of "idiot makes vague threats on Twitter" => "FBI agent encourages him" => "FBI waits and eventually arrests, plot thwarted." in a lot of these stories, which seems to be the basis for your categorical assertion that
> every terrorism prosecution that involved a foiled plot in the past ten years or so has involved the FBI convincing some helpless, directionless loser to do a bad thing and then arresting said loser and claiming victory against Al-Qaeda
So I can see why you would think Jameson fits the pattern.
> Australi Witness urged the FBI source to put nails, glass and metal into the bomb, according to the FBI-authored complaint. He instructed the FBI source "to dip the screws and other shrapnel in rat poison in order to inflict more casualties," the complaint states.
