What's the point of vague terrorism warnings for those abroad?

[MarkOttawa]

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has her doubts, and our Foreign Affairs' alert ain't easy to find:

Terrorism: Useless goverment “action”
http://unambig.com/terrorism-useless-goverment-action/

"...
In truth, the only people who can profit from such a warning are the officials who issue it. If something does happen, they are covered: They warned us, they told us in advance, they won’t be criticized or forced to resign. And if nothing happens, then we’ll all forget about it anyway.

Except that we don’t forget about it. Over time, these kinds of enigmatic warnings do al-Qaeda’s work for it, scaring people without cause. Without so much as lifting a finger, Osama bin Laden disrupts our sense of security and well-being. At the same time, such warnings put the U.S. government in the position of the boy who cried wolf. The more often general warnings are issued, the less likely we are to heed them. We are perhaps unsettled or unnerved, but we don’t know what to do. So we do nothing — and wish that we’d been told nothing as well..."

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Rogo]

I was wondering this aswell, it either has full merit and there is a lot that the general public doesn't know or it's a bit of CYA (cover your a**).  I always wonder if this could also be to reinforce to the people that the government is taking action and trying to influence the public's perception of the government as an entity actively fighting some form of terrorism. Or maybe just to promote vigilance.

Who knows, my :2c:

 

[bdave]

Fear mongering I guess.

 

[Journeyman]

I'm guessing that the point could be any combination of:

1.  It conveys to the terrorists that their attack has been detected (maybe without complete detail), and possibly the cell compromised. Suicide bombers aren't really a dime a dozen; losing an attacker without causing massive destruction really is bad news for them, so they call off the attack. An attack prevented.

2.  The terrorists suspect there's been a leak to western Intelligence from within their ranks, which causes a self-destructive, or at least temporarily paralyzing, witch-hunt. Damage to al-Qaeda.

3.  A bunch of Int geeks are sitting around the Director of National Intelligence's office (or even the Privy Council's Security and Intelligence Secretariat), and they say, "hey I know, let's send out a vague threat warning, and that way if anything happens, we're cool."

Although the last, throw-away COA was so I could fit in with the other guys 


Of course, maybe it's simply a reminder that situational awareness can be a pretty useful attribute when travelling, whether there's a posted threat warning or not. But that's just me.....and I certainly don't have any insider information, or even a cornered market on tinfoil hats    ;D

 

[NavyShooter]

It keeps people scared.

It gives the governments deniability...ie...we warned you something was going to happen...it's not our fault!

NS

 

[Task]

Not that I am on any side one way or another:

If something did go wrong and the government didn't mention there was a possibility of it happening the public would be outraged.

 

[TimBit]

I've deleted my post. Not worth it really.

 

[dapaterson]

There is aso the possibility that actionable intelligence was recieved, but to disclose that information would risk a valuable source, so a watered down, imprecise message was passed out to protect both the population at large and the source.  This wouldn't be the first time such a thing occured.

 

[Journeyman]

OK, assuming a diffuse threat warning is more than merely a government plot to keep paranoid people scared......

Maintaining situational awareness can be more than just an individual attribute. Groups of people exercising a heightened awareness of their surroundings have far more capability to notice suspicious behavior than the intelligence services and police combined. Even without details, a threat warning can cause larger numbers of people to see something out of the ordinary and go, "hmmmm"....report it and possibly thwart a terrorist attack that they may not have seen coming before.

In the end, terrorism isn't a group; it's merely a tactic. And since I figure more people overall will be affected by criminals or killed in car accidents than in any terrorist incident, I'm not going to lose sleep over what al-Qaeda may or may not be planning in Europe.

.....but I will remain aware of my surroundings    :endnigh:

 

[Edward Campbell]

I noted that, yesterday or this morning, France issued a tit for tat terrorist threat warning on the UK. Maybe it's the various TAs and TIAs trying to keep travellers and their money - and there's a lot of it - at home.

 

[dapaterson]

But... but... if terrorism is a tactic, and we've decared a "War on Terror", have we really just declared war on the Tactics school in Gagetown?

(Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing...)

 

[Rogo]

The United States declared a "War on Terror". It doesn't meet any of the formal requirements of a declaration of war being that it doesn't involve an opposing sovereign state.