August 16, 2007 10:52AM # What Price (Restricted) Freedom? By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE About six months ago, I did an elegant [back-of-envelope calculation](https://www.cato.org/2007/01/24/hear-that-its-the-sound-of-a-nation-constricting/) about the Western Hemisphere Travel Restriction Initiative’s cost in terms of lost freedom and commerce. I came up with an estimate of about half a billion dollars (net present value). If that estimate was a little too airy, here’s a clearer cost of WHTI: $944 million over three years. That’s the direct [cost we’re paying](http://www.buffalonews.com/180/story/142108.html) through the State Department for the WHTI rules. So now we’re at around $1.5 billion. Will $1.5 billion+ in damage to the United States’ people, possessions, infrastructure, and interests be averted thanks to WHTI? No. As a security measure, it’s Swiss cheese. WHTI does more harm than good. It is a self-injurious misstep — precisely what the strategy of terrorism seeks to cause. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).