I might remind you that in an earlier generation. Ms Begum would have indeed have been brought back to the UK. Then tried for High Treason and hanged! Or in an even earlier one, hanged, drawn and quartered! IMHO. she got off lightly, given that she decisively turned her back on her native country to live among, support and fight for its declared enemies.

In the matter of civil rights, the equation is a simple one: the amount of security and safety a population has is inversely proportional to the amount of freedom they enjoy. The proliferation of rights makes the detection and punishment of crime, and the elimination of threats to the population at large, more difficult. During the Second World War, there were quite severe restrictions on civil rights -restrictions which most people understood and accepted as necessary. I submit that in the current age of terrorism, most people here do accept such few limitations as exist on our liberties and would indeed, accept more. It is surely extreme foolishness for our politicians to continually reject the notion of compulsory ID cards and to limit surveillance in public spaces.

In a democracy, there is a line to be walked between public safety and individual liberty. In the UK, we are still a little too far on the wrong side of that line.