In the race between Arms and Armour, historically Arms wins every time.
Unfortunatly it seems we do live in the Nanny state where a vocal minority can make enough noise to scare people in charge (politicians) to do almost anything.
It is a classic problem for intelligence services. Their failures are public, their success, private. With the way politics work they must be 'seen' to be doing something, as well as actually doing it.
A line from the british comedy, yes Minister, springs to mind. "We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it".
For reference, I am ex military(navy, submarines) and I do belive in having decent security at airports and other places, but what we have now is ridiculous and IMHO the terrorists have indeed won, or are at least winning.
They forced us (the world) to change our way of life, and be grossly inconvenienced, whilst they are really not.
The case of the man with the twitter page is a good example. Is what he did dumb in the current climate ? of course it is. The problem is the climate and the current rules. The famous quote by Benjamin franklin from 1775 pretty much wraps that one up.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" In this case, the essential liberty is being able to speak without censor, and express thoughts on topics or make jokes without fear of the police crashing down on your house !.
Using another example, an extremley common expression of frustration is "I'm going to kill you for that', or a teenager (or married person for that matter !) "I'm going to get killed when get home (this late, this drunk,etc) " or any other variations on this theme. Yet when this is heard in general conversation, people do not rush off and call the police about an attempted murder, report a potential homicide, or even get arrested for making a deadly threat. Are there exceptions, of course there are, but not normally.
Mark.
(Sydney, Australia)