For the last several weeks Americans have milled about their daily lives under what the Department of Homeland Security has declared a “high risk of terrorist attacks” — or level “orange” on the sound byte- and memory-friendly five-color scale.
Indeed, when he announced the first alert upgrade in seven months (the department ratcheted the “threat level” up from yellow or “elevated”), Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge explained, “The U.S. intelligence community has received a substantial increase in the volume of threat-related intelligence reports. These credible sources suggest the possibility of attacks against the homeland around the holiday season and beyond. The strategic indicators, including al-Qaida’s continued desire to carry out attacks against our homeland, are perhaps greater now than at any point since Sept. 11, 2001.”
Since then, international flights have been canceled or manned with armed air marshals. More generally, the Homeland Security Advisory System (the five-level scale and the associated information and procedures) calls for “coordinating necessary security efforts with armed forces or law enforcement agencies; taking additional precaution at public events; preparing to work at an alternate site or with a dispersed workforce; and restricting access to essential personnel only.”
It’s nice to know that there are systems in place dedicated to detecting threats and protecting citizens from them (in a way that’s psychologically digestible and that tries to suggest meaningful use of taxpayers’ dollars, at least). But, for all of the millions funneled into the young department, what does the system actually do?
Many of the agency’s critics have called the advisory system useless, a meaningless façade designed to give the impression that Homeland Security is hard at work defending America while covertly using their allocated funds to whittle away at civil liberties in the interest of fueling a swelling, power-hungry patriarchy, all the while giving out no information useful to Joe Citizen.
While it’s difficult to prove that the department has averted any would-be terrorist attacks — just a professor looking at a clean term paper can’t know whether a rough draft was clean, too, or if it just passed through the hands of a mindful editor, the absence of terror attacks on American soil isn’t logically conclusive — claims of the department’s pointlessness seem to be mostly baseless. (After all, there’s little point in scaring the public and potentially denting the stock market by canceling specific flights for days and announcing “a substantial increase in the volume of threat-related intelligence reports.”)
Most people don’t know that the terror alert system is largely for the benefit of other government agencies and private businesses. The advisory system announcement read, “There are many federal alert systems in our country … The Homeland Security Advisory System will provide a national framework for these systems, allowing government officials and citizens to communicate the nature and degree of terrorist threats. This advisory system characterizes the appropriate level of vigilance, preparedness and readiness in a series of graduated Threat Conditions.”
Still, the complaints hold a grain of truth: The department’s focus on government agencies and private industry (however prudent) has left the common citizen asking, “What does orange alert mean for me?”
Ridge offered an answer or two in his Dec. 21, 2003, announcement: “Your awareness and vigilance can help tremendously, so please use your common sense and report suspicious packages, vehicles, or activities to local law enforcement. Go over your family emergency plans, and if you haven’t developed one by now, please do so.”
The government has also developed a Web site, Ready.gov that gives tips for preparing for and reacting to a terror incident.
But few Americans have heard Ridge’s announcement, and probably fewer have heard of the above Web site.
And until the Department of Homeland Security launches a more permeating campaign to inform the American public about what they should do, the American Everyman, and indeed America, will be far less prepared that it should be for the unexpected.