As a writer and former newspaper reporter, I was troubled with the inaccuracies in Chan Kheng Hoe's recent letter responding to Helen Ang's Flight from Normalcy article.

Most notably, Hoe says that Ang terms some of the security measures at airports and elsewhere as 'understandable'. The word does not appear anywhere in her column and, in fact, she is highly critical of such measures as profiling and points to an incident where a South Asian-looking man was pulled out of the line because of his face.

She calls the profiling 'unacceptable' and Chan is wrong in attributing the following statement, whether paraphrased or not, to her: 'These measures are necessary and perhaps even understandable in view of the terrorist acts and threats that do happen'.

It's one thing to disagree with a writer's renderings and, under the freedom of speech, I welcome this sort of give-and-take.

Otherwise, such letters will have no value. It's like having someone now responding to my letter, saying that I strongly oppose freedom of speech. Where would such false criticism end?