I dunno. 10 years ago the IRA were still a latent threat here. Now they're not. Despite the PR efforts of the current government I really can't take the threat from the whacky funsters at Al Qaeda Towers very seriously, nor the home-grown idiots who buy their videos and bread recipes.
What does worry me, sorry worry is the wrong word ... what REALLY PISSES ME OFF are the unceasing efforts by our government to register everyone in some database or other, be it ID cards, extended criminal records, the database of every child in the country, the list goes on. These are hugely invasive, hugely expensive and will not work - they will not work technically (government IT projects are invariably a disaster), and they wouldn't even solve the problem they're sold as solving even if they did function as intended, because they're invariably the wrong solution anyway. The solution to every problem seems to be yet another £12bn database, which is just silly.
I'm not worried about this from a conspiracy theory point-of-view, I'm not of the view that the guvvmint is out to control our minds, or anything like that. My main concern is that these databases represent an unprecedented concentration of personal information on citizens which will, in all likelihood, then be written to CD-ROM and
lost in the post. Large numbers of people will have access to these databases, the potential for deliberate or accidental misuse is huge. The consequences of inaccurate information, poorly phrased searches and over-reliance on "what the computer says" by the security forces at times of high drama could even be fatal, if your name or movements happen to match their view of the name or movements of a terrorist.
So no, I don't really feel safer, and I feel the most significant threat to me as an individual is friendly-fire from the people who are supposedly introducing all this nonsense to make me safer.