Terror alarms can do more harm than good

Confusion has followed the shutting of US embassies across the region, leaving an uncertain atmosphere.

A week of confusion and anxiety has followed the US warning of a serious new terrorist threat emanating from this region. Most American embassies across the Middle East and North Africa remain closed, as do some British and other western diplomatic offices. Western travellers have been cautioned, and security was tightened across the region.

Did we really need this vague but ominous alert and all its disruption? The trouble is there is no way to tell.

First the prospect of a terrorist strike was said to have been revealed in "the chatter" - low-level communication among known and suspected terrorists, routinely monitored. Then there was speculation about a warning abstracted from "metadata" - the quantitative analysis of intercepted communication. Then US officials said they had a specific intercept of a conversation between two top Al Qaeda leaders. But why would the Americans reveal that they were tapping such important means of communication? Was this some kind of misdirection?

Then it turned out that embassies were not the main target: a spokesman for Yemen's prime minister said his government had thwarted a large-scale attack on the country's oil infrastructure and the seizure of two southern ports. But other Yemeni officials scoffed at that claim.

Next we learnt that after seven weeks without any drone strikes in Yemen, the White House had authorised five in the last 10 days. Did they neutralise the threat? Or will it recur? Nobody would say.

In the US, domestic political recriminations, justified or not, continue to echo from the killing in Benghazi last September 11 of the US ambassador to Libya and other Americans; in the partisan US political climate almost anything is preferable to putting diplomats at risk. Meanwhile, revelations about National Security Agency snooping on Americans' phone calls have made invasive security unpopular; this warning may have had the effect of improving public perceptions of the NSA.

In this trackless wilderness of disinformation, contradiction and self-serving messages, how should we respond to non-specific threat warnings?

We all know the tale of the boy who cried wolf; the next warning will surely be taken less seriously, with potentially deadly consequences. And scare alerts do the terrorists' work, increasing costs and scaring people, eroding resistance to their perverted goals.

Governments have a duty to protect us but knowing when to go public is not easy, and unnecessary alarms can do more harm than good.