One of the Brussels suicide bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, was also considering a terrorist attack against the UK, according to an intelligence source who spoke to the French media earlier this week.

Le Parisien, Paris's daily newspaper, citing an unnamed intelligence officer, reports that "other European countries" were also being considered by the bomber, besides Belgium. "Great Britain is also mentioned as a potential target."

The new data comes from a laptop that was seemingly discarded in a rubbish bin by El Bakraoui. The intelligence source says that there was a file on the laptop called "Target," written in English, that discusses the possibility of hitting the La Défense region of Paris, and the French far-right Catholic group Civitas.

Another French media outlet, BFM TV, reports that investigators possess a taped conversation between the suspected bomb maker for the Paris and Brussels attacks, Najim Laachraoui, and another unknown contact. BFM says that the UK is mentioned in that conversation, but they decide that the country is “too complicated to strike, that Belgium should remain their operational base and so they should hit France."

The abandoned laptop, if it really did contain an English-language file called "Target," would be another blow against the "down with crypto!" narrative that is being pushed by a number of governments around the world. The November bombings in Paris—which are linked to the Brussels attacks—were seemingly orchestrated via prepaid burner phones, rather than encrypted channels, too. In these cases at least, better human intelligence, rather than surveillance and backdoors, would probably have been more effective.