Peter Coffee’s eWeek column makes sense, too. It’s almost too short to quote from, but it does a very nice job of noting why simply throwing security measures at a problem leads to greater problems of non-compliance and disrepect later on.
Perhaps the worst thing about the post-Sept. 11 environment is the abandonment of cost-benefit analysis, or any analysis at all, in the rush to prove that one has taken every possible precaution. The result reminds me of descriptions of the Prohibition era: The rules become the problem, and people begin to sneer at both the rules and at those who bother to obey them.
He also uses my favorite example of why the banning of pen-knives at various places these days makes so little sense.
Read it.
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