And a white plastic bag leaning against a wire fence was just a bag of rubbish someone was just too lazy to place in a bin?

Sadly, the world we live in has changed dramatically - and for the worse - over the past few years.

Today, a misplaced suitcase in an airport forces a total evacuation and a grounding of flights.

And a white plastic bag leaning against a fence is soon surrounded by police in combat gear and a bomb disposal robot.

The deadly attacks in Paris, and anti-terror raids by armed forces across Europe have consequences.

Those consequences mean as a society we are more suspicious, more anxious and more reactive to occurrences and circumstances that might well be innocuous, but are instead seen through eyes of fear and mistrust.

We are fighting an enemy that knows no boundaries, has no conscience and has no fear of paying the ultimate price to spread its message of terror.

What makes this fight difficult is that we put certain limits on the very people we charge to protect us. We expect them to play fair, to abide by the rules.

And those limits can often severely hamper their ability to catch these terrorists.

At some stage in the not-too-distant future, we will face a conundrum.

Are we, as a free and democratic society, willing to make a trade-off - to balance our expectation of confidentiality and privacy against giving our law enforcement the ability to fight and prevent terrorist attacks?

Earlier this week, the chief executive of Symantec - one of the world's largest internet security companies - said governments were already pressuring tech companies such as Apple and Google to allow them to access people's encrypted data, all under the guise of protecting the greater population from harm.

That means having the ability to spy on not only would-be terrorist cells and access their private conversations, but the private information of your average Joe Citizen as well.

Is that a price we are willing to pay to save lives?