The consensus seems to be that the best way to combat the nebulous threat of terrorism is to curtail exactly those freedoms that genuine terrorists so resent, and there’s no US monopoly on the idea either. An engineer from London’s University College is working on an EU-funded airport security system that hinges on fitting every passenger with an RFID tag so that their every move can be monitored for suspicious behaviour. As if airports weren’t demeaning enough already…

What the world really needs right now is … a way to prevent unauthorised use of mobile phones! Well, never fear – DoCoMo NTT are on the case, and have developed a phone that will lock itself up if its owner strays more than a few meters away from it. And here comes the clever bit: the phone will know where its rightful owner is because they’ll be carrying a smartcard that the phone can detect via Bluetooth! Pure genius – that’ll never be hacked, and no-one would ever lose a credit-card sized bit of plastic, would they?