perfidy

The report of the civil engineers examining the World Trade Center attack came to the conclusion that thousands of lives were spared that might have been lost because people ignored the recommendations of emergency services and fled the building in a self-organizing and effective non-panic..

We know that US borders are porous, that major targets are largely undefended, and that the multicolor threat alert scheme known affectionately as "the rainbow of doom" is a national joke. Anybody who has been paying attention probably suspects that if we rely on orders from above to protect us, we'll be in terrible shape. But in a networked era, we have increasing opportunities to help ourselves. This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid.

This gets into what I (and of course many others) have been saying for some time - that an informed public (and an armed public, but that's not the point here) is the first and best line of defense against terrorist attacks. Note well that every major success in the WoT on our soil was won by ordinary citizens, not government agencies or law enforcement. (The shoe bomber, the wackjob at LAX, flight 93, the DC snipers.) In the case of the DC snipers, those assholes were nabbed despite the best efforts of Sheriff Moosehead and his assholes to conceal the very information that, once leaked, led to their arrest within hours.