Global Warning

By PHILIP BOBBITT
NYT

ON Oct. 3, the State Department issued a travel advisory to Americans about potential terrorist attacks in Europe. The same day, Britain issued a travel advisory based on the threat of terrorist attacks in France and Germany. Shortly afterward, the French government alerted its citizens to an increased risk of a terrorist attack in Britain.

In recent weeks, information from various sources has indicated that Al Qaeda may be planning a large-scale attack on the West. In July, a German citizen of Afghan origin who was captured in Kabul revealed a plot to undertake an attack in Germany modeled on the attacks in Mumbai in 2008. On Oct. 4, an American drone attack in North Waziristan killed 11 jihadists, at least five of whom had German citizenship. On Oct. 5, the French police arrested 12 people linked to an Algerian bomb maker recently arrested in Italy. In addition, security officials from various nations have reported levels of “chatter” among jihadists on a scale comparable to that in the run-up to 9/11. And there have been reports that Al Qaeda’s media arm has prepared a video with a message from Osama bin Laden to be released after the planned attack.

In this context, unfortunately, the warnings from the American and British governments have actually confused matters. Americans were told to “adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling.” A report in The Times noted that the vagueness of the warning “embodied the dilemma for the authorities in the United States and Europe over how to publicize a threat that intelligence analysts call credible but not specific.” How should such warnings be handled?

We could vastly improve our system if we stepped back and looked more closely at the strategy of alert systems. Most important, the government should distinguish between three distinct functions its advisories can perform: informing, alerting and warning.

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