We don't regret the times anti-terrorism legislation has prevented attacks

The opposition’s reasoning in this argument is superficiality at its best. They look at one effect of a policy (a bit better prevention) and from that they conclude that the policy as a whole is good. Obviously, we also do not regret the acts prevented. In fact, we would be raging in anger if the policy, after curtailing so many rights of ours, would still fail to deliver any results in what it is supposed to do in the first place. Coming back to their example, it is doubtful whether criminal justice system would have failed to prevent this act (or any other act of terrorism). It is very easy to point out at one preventive success, while in fact, you have no idea how things would have turned out in other circumstances. In our substantive case we have proven that criminal justice system has preventive capacity, but we are glad to repeat that once more. Under anti-terrorism legislation, you can freely intercept whoever you wish. Under criminal law, you have to get an approval of a judge (or somebody else who has the authority to do so, which depends on the legislation of a country), so the prevention of this act without anti-terror legislation is perfectly plausible. The opposition tells us that they do not regret the acts prevented by anti-terrorism legislation. For some strange reasons they forget several other things that they do not regret. They do not regret that they curtail the rights of their citizens. They do not regret that they promote abuse of the enforcement agencies. They do not regret that under their legislation innocent citizens are afraid to freely act and speak in the fear that they will be abused by their own government. They do not regret discriminating people and separating societies. They do not regret convicting innocent people. They do not regret undermining the whole system of criminal justice when for any crime you can be tried in military courts and denied legal defense. If we extrapolate the case of the opposition a bit further, it becomes quite obvious that the next logical step from their viewpoint would be to release an anti-crime legislation which would allow unlimited detention, unfair trials, limit access to witnesses for each and every crime. After all, they would not regret that they prevented that robbery, would they? If we come to the scenario of 1984, their legislations would arguably prevent all crimes. What about regretting that, also no? The cornerstone of the opposition’s case in the debate should have been a proof that terrorism is a threat of such immensity that just after hearing the word ‘terrorism’ we should dreadfully quiver in fear and beg for mercy. Just because the proposition in the beginning of the case conceded that it is a threat (hey, old crooked trees falling on us is also a threat), they took for granted that they do not have to prove anything here. Besides this, they could have proven that the legislation has enough of potential to curb the potential misuse of it. Instead, the opposition merely believed that fighting terrorism and preserving the national security at any means is the ultimate goal of theirs. They forgot that the state by itself is nothing but only borders and laws, and it consists of people, and it is the people who actually matter – their ability to move, speak and think freely. The whole case of the opposition can be fairly well summarized in one sentence: “Terrorism is bad, let's fight it”. We outlined the superficiality of it above. Since there is not much more to their case, it simply does not stand.