Via Schneier, a good argument against this week's lockdown in Boston:
[K]eeping citizens off the street meant that 99% of the eyes and brains that might solve a crime were being wasted. Eric S Raymond famously said that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". It was thousands of citizen photographs that helped break this case, and it was a citizen who found the second bomber. Yes, that's right – it wasn't until the stupid lock-down was ended that a citizen found the second murderer:
boston.com
The boat’s owners, a couple, spent Friday hunkered down under the stay-at-home order. When it was lifted early in the evening, they ventured outside for some fresh air and the man noticed the tarp on his boat blowing in the wind, according to their his son, Robert Duffy.
The cords securing it had been cut and there was blood near the straps.
We had thousands of police going door-to-door, searching houses…and yet not one of them saw the evidence that a citizen did just minutes after the lock-down ended.
Schneier himself disagrees, to some extent. But then there's this: "Law enforcement asked Dunkin' Donuts to keep restaurants open in locked-down communities to provide...food to police...including in Watertown, the focus of the search for the bombing suspect."
When will we have the conversation about whether all of this is worthwhile?