if i was interested in starting a...resistance movement, i would proceed by simulated terrorism. such a procedure is suggested by things like this, where i'm thinking the authorities evacuated a mall or at least closed in en masse to get a guy wandering around a mall with a rifle, when it was in fact a sap with an umbrella. i'm telling you our hyper-vigilant security condition allows anyone to shut down any facility, or indeed bring to gridlock any major metropolitan area, without actually doing anything that would directly harm anyone. (of course, harm would be done; and yet it would be the response and not the act that caused it.) a few random backpacks with goodwill books or gideon bibles could shut down any transit system. you could disrupt whole military installations or airports with the right umbrella or some empty boxes. not that i'm advocating this, mind you, at least not until i work up a coherent set of demands (perhaps i'd start with: keep chocolate milk in the schools). but hyper-vigilance makes you vulnerable to freakouts; it is in fact a form of unreasoning fear. in a way, you'd give a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that a whole society can be mobilized into a surveillance machine to prevent terrorism.