Well I am glad I stumbled upon Schneier's blog today, it gave me some lunchtime reading material, and I found he recently wrote on a topic I have had interest in and displayed scorn for, DHS terror alerts. I published a cynical email I sent to the DHS back in April of this year. And so Bruce Schneier's blog entry from a couple days ago: Do Terror Alerts Work? obviously struck a chord with me. Not only because his essay echos my sentiment, but because he is a respected security expert who does a good job of analyzing the terror alert system and the current government misuse of them. Sure it's a bit long and obviously not as profound ;-) as my letter, but I certainly think it is worth a read and some consideration, and even a few emails to your congress critters to let them know that if it really is simply a choice between political CYA alerts or a new pair a shoes, that you would prefer to opt out of paying Tom Ridge's salary and head right to the nearest cobbler's shop. Of course we could always have them keep the tax dollars, since they already have them, and do something that would actually be effective in providing for the security of the homeland.