WE'RE LISTENING
So we're now up to "High" status on the color-coded national terrorism alert thingy. What in the world are we supposed to do with this information? Supposing Baltimore didn't currently lay under 7 inches of new snow and I had had to go to work today, would the heightened alert have changed my plans? Nope. Suppose I had planned to take the day off, head to Washington to the National Gallery or the Lincoln Memorial or something, would the heightened alert have caused me to change those plans? In the absence of anything more specific than changing yellow to orange, I would have gone on as planned. So the alert system, because it is so general, really doesn't make us change our behavior one way or the other. What's it for then?Well, I think it has two purposes. First, it's there to let us know that the government is trying to get a better handle on the terror threat than it had prior to 9-11. It's telling us that it knows there's a threat based on some new information, and that it's relaying that threat to us. It's one part open government, and one part butt-covering bureaucracy.
But there's likely another purpose to the alert system that has nothing to do with citizen safety. By changing the status from yellow to orange, our anti-terror forces are sending a message to the terrorists themselves, and that message is simple: We're listening. We know that you're out there, and we have your comm lines tapped. We may not know exactly where you are, or maybe we do but we're waiting for you to make the wrong move. We may not know what your specific plans are, or maybe we do and we're gathering up our own forces at this very moment to pounce on you. We may not know anything more than that you're chattering more than usual, or maybe we know quite a bit but we're holding our fire until we can learn something else about you, your organization and your leadership. Whatever we may or may not know about you, you're not working in the secrecy that you crave but we're not tipping our hand. We know more than you think we know. We're listening.
UPDATE: My theory fits very nicely with this story. We are listening, and what we're hearing is very interesting.
UPDATE: Evidently, what we heard is also very disturbing.