a few things. as i recall, there was an actual (unrelated) credible bomb threat in the New England Medical Center or somewhere thereabouts earlier in the day. that might explain some of the panic but doesn't really justify it. i don't remember if any bomb squad people made statements about whether they made any early conclusions that the purported threats were unrelated.

also, because of the security default practice of hiding information (e.g., excessive Federal classification of information), we might never hear about most incidents of attempted bombing, so we (as civilians) can't accurately evaluate our risks. of course, officials can publish artificially inflated counts of "foiled threats" to promote an atmosphere of fear, but (this may be a pipe dream) having some sort of impartial oversight might help avoid that.

one problem with correcting the "CYA Security" attitudes is reeducating the public. many interests, both political and commercial, profit from a public that lives in an atmosphere of fear and that cannot distinguish real threat from imagined threat. until there is a concerted effort to improve this ignorance, i fear that political efforts to prevent future overreactions will have minimal effect. some recent pieces in popular media about the TSA body scanner insanity do help the situation, but even more would be better.