I am currently standing in a DC metro station.
Every minute or two the Metro Authority is making announcements like "Unit 28, report to Central" and "All units, report any suspicious activity."
I've lived in the DC area for 25 years and I've never heard announcements on Metro like these.
Why is the Metro Authority making these announcements over the public address system?
Did all the Metro Police radios suddenly break? Are they now forced to use loud speakers, blaring their covert messages across every platform, to communicate?
Of course not. What we have here is Security Theater.
Security Theater is Bruce Schneier's term for official actions which are designed to make us feel like we're safer but which actually have no impact on our safety at all. As Schneier says:
There are two ways to make people feel more secure. One is to make them more secure and hope they notice. The other is to make them feel more secure and hope they don't.
Security Theater can take many forms. Following last week's attempted Times Square terror attack, the big one is probably going to be cameras and surveillance. The authorities are already touting how they saw Shahzad on camera as he left the scene.
This is already leading to calls for more cameras and more surveillance.
Are These Calls Justified?
Calls for more surveillance seem to make sense, until you look closely. Then they fall apart.
Police cameras did not thwart this attack. Police cameras played absolutely no role in preventing any death or injury.
The bomb wasn't spotted by officers monitoring cameras. It was found by street vendors selling their wares. Just like they do every day.
The street vendors alerted the street cops. The street cops looked at the Pathfinder and called the bomb squad.
The response was 100% street level and 100% local.
This attack and our response to it shows that expensive, intrusive, central police solutions don't prevent terror attacks.
But we're already being deafened by calls for more of the unconstitutional measures which failed to prevent this attack.
Don't fall for it.