This is how "death by a thousand cuts" is implemented

The (reversed) image above shows the evacuation of the Newark Airport because someone (apparently a nonterrorist*) walked the wrong way through a terminal checkpoint.  The process is explained by Mark LeVine, a visiting professor at Lund University in Sweden, in an article about the "underwear bomber":

One angry young man with about three ounces (around 80 grams) of explosive material, $2,000, and a pair of specially tailored underwear has completely disrupted the US aviation system.

It does not even matter that he failed to blow up the plane.

The costs associated with preventing the next attack from succeeding will measure in the tens of billions of dollars - new technologies, added law enforcement and security personnel on and off planes, lost revenues for airline companies and more expensive plane tickets, and of course, the expansion of the 'war on terror' full on to yet another country, Yemen.

Matthew Yglesias echoes similar sentiments:

Insofar as stepped-up security makes flying both more expensive and more annoying, and therefore pushes more people to drive long distances, we’re going to cost lives rather than save them. And at the end of the day, you have to understand that terrorists are not going to weaken America by killing us all a hundred at a time with bombs. They do much more to weaken America by induces us to waste money and strangle our economy.

I'll add more on this later after I dig through some more links.

*Update - A doctoral student at Rutgers who was saying goodbye to his girlfriend.