Terror Alert: Severe? What will it take?

[DEVA]

That is: What do you think it will take for the terror alert to be changed to RED/Severe? The highest level. I mean, really. Won’t the potential threat have to be so great that it really WON’T be a potential threat…but instead, an IMMINENT threat?

Will it read something like: “Suicide bomber suspected to hit a major city TODAY. So, if you live in a heavily populated area, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.” ???

What do you think we can expect?

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020312-5.html

The higher the Threat Condition, the greater the risk of a terrorist attack. Risk includes both the probability of an attack occurring and its potential gravity.

Threat Conditions shall be assigned by the Attorney General in consultation with the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.

Except in exigent circumstances, the Attorney General shall seek the views of the appropriate Homeland Security Principals or their subordinates, and other parties as appropriate, on the Threat Condition to be assigned.

< snip >

Severe Condition (Red). A Severe Condition reflects a severe risk of terrorist attacks.

So Condition Red would be called if John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge decide there’s an extremely high probability of an attack occurring at all, or that there’s only a high probability but that the attack would be on someplace really special and important, like the White House, or that there’s only a high probability but that the attack would be really horrible, like anthrax being sprayed over NYC.

[Huerta88]

The problem with these discrete terror levels is that they promise a simplicity and precision they can’t deliver. Basically, if the govt. had information reliable enough, with little enough chaff, and with sufficient particularity to get the timing and locale of a particular terror event down a near-certainty, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t have caught, or be hot on the trail of, the would-be perp. So short of an extremely acute and specific situation (e.g., a plane has been hijacked and is en route to _______), where a short-term warning could credibly be formulated, I don’t know how confident anyone can be that the threat warning is ever accurate within better than a full color level standard deviation. Also loved when they were trying to create sublevels. “We’re at Orange plus, which corellates to an 81.775% chance of an attack within 12.125 days.” Bit of a significant digits problem.

The other thing to take into account is the political and practical aspects of the thing. One, they can never be too optimistic and lower the threat level, because if something happens (and there’s never a guarantee it won’t), they’ll be blamed for lack of vigilance. Having some elevated level provides political cover. For that reason, I can’t imagine we’ll be seeing a green level or even blue anytime soon, if ever. How could they ever be sure?

For different reasons, I think they’d be reluctant to go red without the kind of it’s-actually-underway evidence of a particular terrorist act – because of the huge economic consequences and panic in the streets. Again, no one politically wants to be blamed for invoking Code Red based on imprecise chatter – especially when the incremental degree of safety benefits is dubious.

So you have a system where, apart from the inherent imprecision of the categories, there are additionally fairly strong externalities militating in favor of splitting the baby and keeping it yellow or orange indefinitely.

[rjung]

Putting aside the political nature of the alerts (as Huerta88 summarized above), consider this – if you think of the Terror Alert status as an indicator of how probable a terrorist attack is, then it’s not unlike a weather report (“85% chance of rain, and 35% chance of terrorism”).

Now, how accurate is our weather reporting these days? How many years did it take to get there? And how long have we been doing this Terror Alert stuff, in comparison?