WILL Councillor D Pearson (Letters, October 8) let us know precisely which civil rights we should be willing to surrender and explain exactly for each one we give up how we will be made safer?

I personally would rather live in complete freedom and accept the very, very slight risk of a terrorist attack.

If reports are to be believed, it would appear that the American authorities had been aware of all the details of the terrorists who carried out the attack on September 11 for months beforehand, but for some reason chose to take no action against them.

They could have simply deported them as undesirable aliens. One wonders why they did not.

Despite all his blustering in the media, I very much doubt that President Bush has the slightest intention of trying to introduce draconian legislation to attempt to curtail the civil liberties of American citizens.

In reality, an American president has very little say in internal affairs of his country and most certainly cannot drastically alter the written constitution.

L LAWES, Bold Street, Blackburn.