Reading the papers today it seems to Guido that the terrorists are winning, freedom is being curtailed, civil liberties dismissed and the state is monitoring us ever more closely. The government wants compulsory biometric ID cards, our cities have CCTV surveillance watching everywhere and thousands of innocent children have their DNA stored on a government database. Thousands more have been arrested on suspicion under anti-terror laws with few charged.

Depressingly most people support even more authoritarian policies including extending detention without trial, softened into compliance as day after day the news media and the government project the sense of a nation under continuous attack.

During these days of heightened terror alerts it is probably not popular to recommend reading Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, but it is certainly the right time to remember what we are fighting to defend.

Free and open societies respect civil liberties even when under attack or they cease to be open societies.