This multi-faceted post on security—from physical to digital and back—by Tim Maly is terrific.

The practice of locking the front door baffles me. It seems to me that, if you lock your front door, you are saying you believe that, at some point, someone will come along and jiggle your door-knob. Someone will give it a try. And I just can’t believe that’s the case. I mean, what, do villains just cruise down the block, jiggling door-knobs in sequence? Of course they don’t!

Now, you could say no, that’s not it at all; instead, locking the front door is a ritual we all perform which provides a general assumption of front-door-locked-ness. Almost like vaccination. One person does it, it’s meaningless; everybody does it, it’s a big deal. And also like vaccination because, once everybody does it, you largely get the benefits even if you don’t!

Locking the front door as collective action. Hmm. I still don’t think it makes any sense. I still do it.