John T wrote:

What's the damage to society if law enforcement is too reluctant to
prosecute suspicious individuals in the interest of protecting every
single innocent life?

This has been answered numerous times, albeit with varied ratios grin.
Franklin's version was:

...that it is better 100 guilty Persons should
escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.

Do you imagine that he, and all those others that said something similar,
had no conception of the possibility that those guilty persons could harm
innocent persons? I dare say they did realize this, but that they
recognized that this reflects the nature of our society. We expose
ourselves to the risk of harm by individuals abusing our freedoms because
the alternative - an elimination of those freedoms - would be more harm
than those guilty persons could possibly hope to achieve.

Guilty persons can harm persons. The elimination of freedom harms the
society and every innocent member.

In Franklin's case, I expect that it was reasoning of this sort that
resulted in:

They who would give up an essential liberty for
temporary security, deserve neither liberty or
security.

How to you prosecute a war where the enemy wears no uniform?Â*Â*
Where heÂ*is willing to sacrifice his life to achieve his
tactical goal?Â*Â*WhereÂ*heÂ*hasÂ*no apparent desire to discern
miltary from civilian targets?Â*Â*WhereÂ*thereÂ*is state
sponsorship, but no state control?

I don't know the complete answer either, but I do know part. You deny your
enemy his weapons whereever possible. Terrorists thrive on terror. Deny
them this. Don't react with fear. Banning aircraft from wide swaths of
airspace is no more rational than banning rental vans from a city would be.

I've complaints about the UK's Tony Blair, but his "will not be terrorised"
was right on the mark. Where he claims "we will hold true to the British
way of life", he is denying the enemy the gain they crave when they write
"Britain is now burning in fear" on the web from their hiding spots.

Unfortunately, since the recent shooting of that unfortunate Brazilian, the
"fear" statement is a lot closer to truth. And that's completely
self-inflicted.

- Andrew