The World Under Assault: Can Science Beat Terrorism?

The above title advertises a Cambridge Science Festival event, (9 March 2009) in which I have been invited to participate.  My answer to the question in the title, will be spelt out in my first PowerPoint slide:

No: because paranoia cannot be cured by CCTV, or DNA databases, or ID cards, or CRB checks, or number plate recognition, or GPS tracking, or email archiving, or data mining.

Further, I intend to argue that the combined force of all of these measures feeds the threats that they purport to defend against. For rest of essay click here.