Against "threat levels"

Normally, I'm all in favour of greater openness in government. However, like Justin, I don't like Reid's plan to publicize the level of the terrorist threat.
The problem is, such levels contain almost no information.
The Home Office reckons the current threat level is "severe", meaning it thinks an attack is highly likely.
But is this true? How can we tell? Let's say an attack doesn't happen. Does this mean the Home Office overstated the threat? Not at all, because even highly likely events often don't happen.
Or say an attack does happen. Does this mean it understated the threat? Again, not necessarily. An event can happen, having been highly likely but far from inevitable.
The threat level is merely a subjective judgment of probability. And such judgments are almost impossible to verify or falsify; we can't run numerous repeats of history with a "severe" threat level to see how many times terrorists actually strike. The threat level is, in Karl Popper's terms, a non-falsifiable proposition. We just can't tell if it's right or not.
Worse still, we know - thanks to research into cognitive biases - that subjective judgments of probability are subject to countless errors. Even honest and unbiased judges can go woefully wrong.
And the Home Office isn't an unbiased judge. It's got a bias to overstating the level of the threat. One reason for this lies in the economics of bureaucracy (pdf), as pioneered by William Niskanen. Bureaucrats want to expand their budgets. They do so by exaggerating the importance of their work.
To see another reason for bias, just imagine what would happen if there's a terrorist attack after the government announced, say, a "moderate" threat. Every knobhead dead tree will accuse the government of understating the threat, of being complacent. The criticism for appearing to overstate the threat will be much smaller.  So there's another incentive to overstate the danger.
In most cases, I wouldn't worry about the government giving out noisy and biased information - it's what it normally does.
But here, there's a real cost to doing so. In announcing a high threat level, the government is inviting us all to regard innocent Muslims - or just people who look like Muslims - with suspicion. Worse still, it might be an invitation to beat up any Pakistani with a rucksack.

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

Making it public would be absolutely pointless. If the threat is judged as severe then should no-one leave their homes? If not, then what else is the average person supposed to do?

[dearieme]

Does it matter either way? Surely no-one believes a word the fucking fuckers say?

[OneEyedMan]

What using them as coordinating mechanisms instead of notifications to the general public? So for a made up example, the military cancels all leave and the police doubles patrols when the code is set to orange. Maybe at yellow you have to take your shoes off at the airport, but at green you don't. Then you don't make the code a secret, but you don't advertise it either.

[Paulie]

It's funny the way that newspapers publicly call for all kinds of deregulation while creating the conditions that make it impossible. Your argument here, Chris, is the most effective one that I think you could find to oppose, say, a public enquiry into the 7/7 bombings and the response from the emergency services. But calls for enquiries - and the enquries themselves - are always a good cheap source of shrill copy.

They will keep asking till they get one.

[Phil]

As you say, there's absolutely no way for a threat assessment as vague as this to be falsified - if it rains after the Met Office gave out a 10% chance of rain, they're not actually *wrong*, we've just gone down the 10% trouserleg instead of the 90% one. Likewise if the Home Office predicts an attack's highly unlikely and one happens - or (more probably) if they predict an attack's highly likely and it *doesn't* happen.

But the absence of anything measurable is depressingly typical of this government's policy on terrorism. Living in Manchester and having friends in London, I've seen a bit of terrorism from fairly close quarters over the years, and I've never known a government as jumpy as this one. If only Reid (or Blair) would actually come out and say "Yes, I remember the IRA too, and yes, for most of us life went on - but we think these guys are different for this and this reason; they're harder to deal with for this and *this* reason; and we think the overall policy of a massive clampdown and general alarm will be effective, against this new kind of mad bomber, for *these* reasons". Then we could have one of those open debate thingies that Blair apparently wants to have.