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The cost of Security

When is too much security a bad thing?  One often hears politicians saying "one death is too many", but how does that translate in the real world.

Taking a real world example:  The U.S. government expanded its sky marshal service following the catastrophe of 9/11; today more than 4,000 sky marshals ply the "friendly skies".  Between the end of December 2001 (when the program was first implemented) and December 31, 2009 total arrest by sky marshals was 4, (not per marshal -- in total).  Cost of each arrest was therefore $200 million.

The question is was that an appropriate resource allocation for the government.  But consider this, a number of American shun the airline industry after 9/11 (both fear and additional check-in procedures), the result has been estimated that an additional 3,000 road deaths occurred because of the switch by many Americans away from aircraft (very safe) to their cars (not so safe).

One could say that a percentage of the additional road deaths were caused by the additional inconvenience of flying following the implementation of additional securities measures.  So in fact, the additional security in airports and aircraft achieve the exact opposite of what was intended (e.g. reduce the overall number of deaths).

The law of unintended consequences rules!

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