Below is a slightly augmented (with links) version of a post I sent to Dave Farber’s Interesting People list in response to a request by another poster for what should government do regarding plots like the one recently foiled regarding infiltrating planes in the UK to attack the U.S.; the poster asked:

Now that the maniacs have our full attention, I’ll ask once more the question I’ve asked before:

What should a government do?  How far should it go, to surveil, arrest and interrogate the sort of people who’d plan something like this? It’s all very well to complain of governmental threats to our liberty; indeed, such complaints are a vital part of that liberty, so keep ’em coming.  But at some point, somebody’s got to decide what we will do against these disgusting, murderous fanatics.

And so the question:  To foil plots like these, what would IPers do?

A very interesting question on news from the UK, Hiawatha Bray, 10 August 2006.

Well, for one thing, IPers can continue to discourage use of methods that have little promise of working, such as blanket scans of all telephone numbers or electronic mail, which just increase the haystack without making finding the needle more likely, or national ID cards such as the British government has been pushing lately.