Of course there are other possibilities, but it comes down to creating a threat profile and doing a cost/benefit analysis. This works from both sides. Unfortunately, the bad guys have a better track record at this point. The US government completely fails in this regard because they keep doing feel good measures that really have no use. I guess it is the nature of government to simply throw money at a problem and then hope it has some beneficial effect.
For example, they could simply mandated bomb resistant air cargo containers on planes. Checked baggage then doesn't have to be searched as thoroughly since if there is a bomb, it is not going to take down the plane. This is one thing that El Al does. I have no idea why it is not done here. The only thing I can think of is adding more employees to the federal payrolls to do the searches and spending hundreds of millions on high tech equipment makes the guys in Washington feel better.
Throwing security measures in place without first determining what you are trying to protect and from who is useless. First you make those determinations and then you figure out the best most cost effective solution that will give you what you want. What we have scene with airlines is mainly very poorly thought out knee jerk reactions which have no use at all. This is why you have bans on tweezers and morons cutting locks off my bags when I fly.
I am curious in what other contexts in your life do you think this way?
Mainly in my line of work but the basic ideas apply to life in general and everyone does it. Before you are going to do something you make a personal determination if the reward outweighs the risk involved. You also determine if the cost to do something outweights the benefit involved. Simply put, it is what keeps most people from going out and robbing a bank. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong. The idea is to try to get it right most of the time. :)
I agree. However I know for a fact this feeble government has stopped several terrorist attacks the civilian public will probably never know about. So it skews the perspective of what has or has not been done.