"The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to defer all travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza ... Government employees have been prohibited from traveling to the West Bank and Gaza and urged to avoid East Jerusalem, including the Old City. Private American citizens should avoid travel to these areas at this time and Americans residing in the West Bank and Gaza should consider relocating to a safe location, if they can do so safely ..."

A half hour later the phone rang again. It was my wife. "I was just talking with someone at the office who said he's canceling his family's trip to Turkey next week because he's afraid they'll get caught in riots. Do you think we should cancel our trip? Is it safe?"

Recent turmoil in Africa and the Middle East have underscored yet again the volatility of world politics -- and the vulnerability of the world traveler. Vacationers are understandably skittish. Why go to a region plagued by religious, political or social turbulence? Why risk ruining your vacation -- let alone ruining your life?

But sometimes it isn't easy to make last-minute travel changes. Sometimes business travelers are scheduled to attend critical meetings in a region they would otherwise avoid. Or sometimes -- as with us -- travelers are about to embark on an ambitious trip they have already organized and paid for. In such situations, the assessment of risk is complicated; you have to weigh a cornucopia of conflicting factors before deciding whether to cancel or not.

Such circumstances have given birth to a brave new entrepreneurial world: the travel security industry. This is a much more cloak-and-daggerish place than the official foreign ministry Web pages, local publication sites and message boards to which Net-savvy travelers have conventionally turned for information about what's really happening around the world. In addition to scouring the Internet themselves, travel security firms draw on global networks of intelligence operatives to help make their own risk precautions and predictions.

I must confess, right here, that basically this whole industry partly creepifies me and partly outrages me. The creepiness quotient arises from the fact that the industry is based on and nurtured by international fear and chaos; like media outlets themselves, but even more directly, travel security firms live on social and political turbulence. The outrage arises from the fact that, ironically enough, given their obsession with intelligence details, such firms intrinsically play off and promulgate old fears, stereotypes and divisions.

Don't travel, these firms will tell you. But travel is always a balance of risk and reward -- and I believe from the core of my being that the world is essentially a friendly place, and that travel is the most powerful antidote of all to the diseases of religious and racial ignorance, exclusion and persecution. It is incumbent on all of us to get out there and experience the world ourselves, not through the screen of someone else's perceptions and perspectives.

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