If we don’t bug a conversation between Khan and Ahmed, who do we bug?

Should members of Britain’s beleaguered and persecuted bombing community be subjected to intrusive surveillance techniques such as bugging? It seems a bit illiberal, given their very real difficulties in day-to-day life. Hard enough trying to find a safe place to hide all that fertiliser, castor beans, etc., without having to worry if your whispered conversations after Friday prayers are being eavesdropped upon by some spook. There is probably a European Union law about bugging Muslim terrorists, which insists you have to notify them in advance and also provide disabled access ramps if you’re bugging them in a public place.

I remember an enormous furore a couple of decades back when it was revealed that MI5 had been bugging one or another homicidal Welsh nationalist group — The Revolutionary Sons of Noggin the Nog, or something. The Welsh psychos complained that this was an infringement of their civil liberties and that one should be allowed to go about one’s business, setting houses alight and planning bomb attacks on people whose names had vowels, without the totalitarian interference of the state.