The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has made an astonishing proposal among his raft of strategies to be unveiled today. It is that personal information possessed by MI5 on some 20,000 British “suspected” citizens be declassified and shared with local authorities, police “and others”. This is in order to “counter terrorism”. There is no way such material can possibly stay secret.

Since no one knows if they are on this list, they have no way of countering or correcting false identification or information. No one giving information to the state, including possibly the identity of the giver, will be able to trust its secrecy. Indeed if the list is not declared or even vetted, the suspicion must be that any MI5 intelligence on individuals will no longer be secret. This is not just a police state but an insecure state. Parliament should demand instant clarification.

Nothing is more dangerous to freedom than a new home secretary. He or she is bombarded with ideas from the backwoods of the security industry, ideas that failed to pass muster with his or her predecessors. The industry knows that the newcomer will be desperate to win headlines as “tough on crime”. It will push eagerly for new powers and new controls. Javid appears to have fallen at the first fence.

Some of his proposals are sensible. It is right to combat all conspiracies at their roots, rather than just respond to their consequences. The government’s much-derided Prevent strategy, focusing on radicalisation in schools, prisons and religious institutions, was ham-fisted. But behind almost every terrorist incident is some deed of radicalisation. Prevention at source has to be the way forward, and that relies on intelligence within the community – and trust in that intelligence. But if such prevention is perhaps weakened by a respect for human and civil rights so be it. That is the price of freedom. Home secretaries are entrusted with guarding that freedom.

There were five terrorist incidents in Britain last year. They were massively over-reported, so much so that it is hard to believe imitation did not play a part. A further nine plots were apparently foiled. The security services cannot stop everything, but they are clearly having considerable success and deserve thanks for doing so. But they cannot be the judge of their own powers.

Javid is now in danger of capitulating to terrorism’s prime goal, which is to undermine the liberties and dignities of the state. Britain is utterly obsessed with terrorism – while far more frequent knife crimes are all but ignored. No city in Europe has been rendered as ugly as the West End of London, with its array of gates, barriers, bollards and police armed with automatic weapons. Museums, shops and sporting events must spend fortunes on security checks. At the entrance to parliament, police are instructed to feel inside men’s underpants. I know this from personal experience.

We must be educated to accept a balance of risk. Terrorists aim to change our way of life. They want to show our much-vaunted freedoms and tolerances to be a sham. The one thing not to do is suggest they might be right. That is what Javid is doing today.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian staff columnist