Self Defense: Security vs. Convenience
January 21, 2026
By Rusty Starkey
For years, I’ve been telling people that the concepts of security and convenience are mutually exclusive. The more you have of one, the less you can have of the other. For example, prisons are very secure and at the same time very inconvenient. Imagine if just anyone could walk into or out of a prison. What would be the point?
In my line of work, this is a complicated balance that we deal with daily. Most of our clients want security in some form, but they don’t want to have to sacrifice their convenience. Many systems put in place to secure their locations make things much less convenient for their employes and guests. Locked doors, cameras, gates, fences, alarms etc. make their facility more secure, but many of those safeguards are never put in place because they make operations less convenient.
Think about your own life. How often have you been prompted (or even in some cases – forced) to enable 2 factor authentication on some electronic item or account. How annoying is that? You’ve got to put in a username and password or a pin number. Then you’ve got to scan your face or your thumbprint. Sometimes you also have to get a text or email with a verification code and enter all of that just to look at your bank account. Why do I have to do all that stuff just to look at a bunch of zeroes on the screen? Because it is a lot more secure. Is it absolutely secure? No, unfortunately, smarter and dedicated criminals can bypass all those measures in some cases and get into things anyway.
So, what do we do? Forego all those things and just leave everything unsecured or as least secured as possible to make it more convenient, or deal with all of the inconvenience to make it more secure? Ultimately, that’s a decision for you to make based on your values. The great thing about living in a country like ours is that you have the freedom to make those choices for yourself.
Years ago, people didn’t lock their doors to their homes or cars. Is it because there was no crime? No, it was because there was a lot less crime. Also, towns were smaller and less crowded. Everyone knew everyone. If anything happened strange everyone in town knew about it and everyone likely knew who was responsible. There was security bult into our lifestyles. People were more connected socially. People were outside more so they saw who was out moving through the neighborhood and looking around at the Joneses’ house for too long.
We live in a different time. Things are not how they used to be and people are not as connected to each other anymore. We are connected through phones, and social media, and apps, video doorbells and security cameras. We have greater levels of security but at the cost of less convenience. And to an extent, at the cost of more freedom.
See, that’s another aspect of this idea of security vs convenience. Security vs. Freedom. As a country, or a community, to make things more secure, we are required to give up a certain level of freedom. That’s a different article for a different day but consider how our lives have been affected by this concept.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. In that time, air travel has changed greatly. TSA checks, searches, x-ray scanners, air marshals, no fly lists, and more have made flying a much less convenient way to travel. And on top of this loss of convenience, we have essentially lost some freedoms. And we have definitely lost more privacy. That’s just one example. There are many more.
And that’s the real question to ask yourself. When considering how much security you want vs. how much convenience you like, or how much freedom you are willing to lose weighed with how much privacy you can comfortably give up, what do you value? That’s what you need to understand to make those decisions.
Perhaps in a future article I will explore that idea further. Plenty of recent events have made that question imperative. The military action in Venezuela, the ICE involved shooting of an American citizen, even the mass killings of Iranian protestors by their own government. Freedom isn’t free as the saying goes. How hard do we want to fight for it to keep it? Thomas Jefferson once said, “When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.” Another quote that is sometimes attributed to Jefferson is, “Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uninformed, and uninvolved people.” Let us not be those people who allow freedom to be lost on our watch for the sake of security, or out of fear.
Rusty Starkey
Senior Instructor in Cornerstone Jeet Kune Do
Former Law Enforcement Officer
Security Professional