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You are right. But. Suspicion about the existence of a crime (and plotting a crime with intent is by itself a crime) is (given enough evidence) reason enough t

• Silhouette 11y ago
  It seems like we agree on the general principles here, but I think you have to be pragmatic about applying them. We all live together in the same society, so we can never have complete freedom and universal rights. If nothing else, sometimes the rights and freedoms we value come into conflict. A classic example is that in general we might want to protect freedom of expression and we might also respect a right to privacy. However, at some point those competing interests are incompatible, and so we have to try to balance them as fairly as we can. Finding that balance is particularly difficult in cases where the damage caused from a violation may be very high but such violations are rare in practice. This is probably true, at least in countries like mine, both of fighting real violent terrorism and of real damage from blanket government surveillance. In both cases, we're also concerned about the potential future harm, not just the actual risk of harm today. Unfortunately, hardly anyone is in a position to realistically assess the risk and make an informed personal judgement about what they think a good balance should be in an ideal world, even before we consider legitimate differences of opinion or the complications of not living in an ideal world.