Balloon Lunacy

According to CNN, charges are expected in the saga of the balloon boy. What good will that do? The government is going to charge someone who did no harm to anyone else. Sure, the money and time the government used in chasing the balloon (how great it was to see that the government was so worried that it had about 50 emergency cars chasing the balloon!) was ill-spent, but having government police and fire muddies what the charges should be. Wouldn't it be much easier if we just had private defense agencies to which the father would owe restitution (and of course, in a Libertarian society it would be double whatever the cost was, i.e., the Libertarian idea of two teeth for a tooth).