Britain's launch of a US-style terrorism alert system will address concerns about lack of transparency but must avoid the pitfalls of "crying wolf" or being seen as a political tool, international experience shows.
British authorities will on Tuesday introduce a five-layered threat system to inform the public, with levels ranging from low (attack unlikely) to critical (attack expected imminently).
It closely resembles the scheme in the United States, which since its launch in March 2002 has been set at yellow (elevated) - the third of five levels - apart from seven episodes ranging in length from 10 to 101 days when it has climbed to the second level, orange (high).
A comparable four-grade system in Australia has remained unchanged at the third level, medium - "terrorist attack could occur" - since its introduction in June 2003.
Varying the level too often can be seen as crying wolf and lead to "threat fatigue" and public cynicism. That may help explain why the United States, after four raised alerts in 2003, issued just one each in 2004 and 2005 and none so far this year. The last one came after the London bombings of July 2005.
On the other hand, leaving the warning constant can also invite criticism of governments. "The government is a little bit caught, because clearly the level of threat has increased since the involvement in Iraq, but of course they're not admitting to that," said Clive Williams, security analyst at Australia's Macquarie University, referring to his country's troop presence in the Middle East.
It also would take a brave government to reduce the official threat level to low, because an unexpected attack following such a step would make it look either incompetent or irresponsible.
POLITICAL FACTORS:
Williams said such schemes tend to become politicised, especially against the background of sharply increased government spending on counter-terrorism since the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. "It would look politically strange, I suppose, if they were to downgrade the (threat) level when they're saying we need to spend all this kind of money. And (security) agencies of course wouldn't want to see the level go down, because again that might affect their counter-terrorism budgets," he said.
The launch of the new British system follows criticism from a parliamentary intelligence panel of the various secret alert levels in place before last year's attacks on London, in which four young suicide bombers killed 52 people.
It found that a decision by the government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre to downgrade the overall threat level in May 2005, weeks before the July 7 attacks, had not materially affected the alertness of police and emergency services. But it questioned the usefulness of a system where changed threat levels had little or no practical effect, and said ministers, officials and practitioners all found it confusing.
Nick Pratt, a former CIA official now with the Marshall European Centre for Security Studies in Germany, said the vital element of any warning system was to explain to the public how to respond.
"The problem is not in the raising and lowering of the alert systems, the problem is how does the average citizen react to this," he said. "It's very difficult for the average citizen to figure out what he has to do."
As an example of a highly effective system, he pointed to the French "Vigipirate" scheme where a change in alert level requires specific actions from government and local authorities, security services, railways and airports, among others.
Measures to protect critical infrastructure are complemented by the unusually wide powers granted to French anti-terrorism investigators to haul in and detain suspects to avert a perceived threat: "They can roll up anyone they want if they think something's coming." But Pratt noted that some countries are more limited in their available threat responses because their anti-terrorism powers are more restricted. "You basically can do what your legal system will allow you to do."
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