“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11,” Bloomberg said.

The world is generally safer now than at almost any previous time, particularly for those of us that remember the Cold War and the early-mid 1980s, when even these measures weren't required to avoid mutually-assured destruction (MAD) by two super-powers and their proxies. The only people wanting to limit freedom are politicians in the pocket of those wanting to expand the myriad of security services of the state. This feeds into the projected paranoia of those citizens who fail to understand the true cost, chance, or opportunity of reducing terrorist activities. Of course there has to be an attempt to reduce terrorist activities, but its the internal processes and procedures in place currently between the myriad network of security services which need to be reformed drastically, not the further expansion of those security services or the reduction in freedoms.

Terrorism is an issue of public security, while before 1991 the Soviet Union (for the Western world at least) was an issue of national security. Issues of public security need to be treated as such, not over-inflated and treated incorrectly. This helps support the terrorists, not defeat them, as has been shown in almost every internal urban civil conflict in the past hundred years.