> you're far more likely to be killed by alcohol induced liver damage
Try telling that to someone who doesn't drink.
Try telling that to someone who doesn't drink.
If you look at the number of seizures under the terrorism act and compare that to number of terrorist attacks over the same period, i bet there have been more seizures than attacks.
Both of the terror attacks in question were stabbings of individual victims (Mohammed Saleem and Lee Rigby). Both were killed.
So in fact, assuming conditions remain as they've been for the last five years (and for several years before that), one appears to be at least as likely to have ones laptop seized than getting harmed in a terror attack. On the other hand, the harm of the latter is still clearly worse, given that both victims were murdered.
There were also 3 bombing attempts (all by the same far right extremist - Pavlo Lapshyn - trying to kill muslims, but spectacularly failing because nobody were present when his bombs went off).
A further two planned attacks never happend (one involved a plan to bomb an EDL rally, but the would-be terrorists arrived to late and left without doing anything; one involved plans that were never attempted set into life at the time the people in question were arrested). The calibre of would-be terrorists in the UK thankfully seem to be rather low.
[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/terrorism-prevent...
For example, when you're comparing prices at a store, you might be so rational that you perfectly compute the expected payoff for each product and choose the optimal one. But does your brain work the same way when deciding whether to steal the product too? If the expected payoff for that was higher, would you just go ahead and steal it?
Don't you think people might not think the same way about the more common cases and the less common cases?
The thinking goes, its ok for the government to snoop on the everybody in the name of catching terrorists.. because I am not a terrorist and they won't snoop on me.