Bruce Schneier records the obit of the DHS's laughable Terror Threat indicator:
The DHS is Getting Rid of the Color-Coded Terrorism Alert System
Good. It was always a dumb idea.
But the money quote is in his addendum. Something dubbed Blakley's Law:
That....is full blown awesome."Every public alert system's status indicator rises until it reaches its disaster imminent setting and remains at that setting until it is retired from service."It's easy to see why Blakley's law holds: if something terrible happens and the alert status didn't predict it, the keepers of the alert status will be blamed for not preparing us for the disaster. Setting the alert status to "Disaster imminent" when no disaster is likely costs the public some money and mental health, but it doesn't hurt them in other ways. On the other hand, setting the alert status to "Don't worry, be happy" just before a disaster does happen is the worst case for everyone - nobody prepares for the disaster, and the people in power lose their jobs for failing to prevent or prepare for the crisis.
1 comment:
Why only a terror threat anyway. Let's have a jobs threat alert, a civil liberties threat alert, a laws not applying to the well connected threat alert, a bottom 99% not quite at 00% of the wealth alert.
The least significant threat to this country(Constitution) is the terror threat.
General welfare my ass.
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