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Homeland Security Drops Color-Coded Terror Alerts
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that the Homeland Security Department is poised to end its five-tiered, color-coded terrorism warning system, a post-Sept. 11 endeavor that has been called too vague to be useful and has been mostly ignored or mocked by the public. The domestic security advisory system was created in 2002 under then-Secretary Tom Ridge and in 2004, the department began assigning color threat levels to general targets such as aviation, financial services and mass transit. However the Department hasn't changed the alert level in four years, even after the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 and the alert level has only been elevated to red once, on Aug. 10, 2006, when British police disrupted a plot to detonate liquid explosives on airliners. Although it is unknown what, if anything, will replace the color-coded alerts, a senior Homeland Security official, who did not want to speak on the record about a decision still under review, says that 'the goal is to replace a system that communicates nothing.'" Can't we just re-use the big DefCon displays from Wargames?
Disclaimer: I’m Canadian, so my view of this whole color coded terror alert thing may be a bit off.
Rather than trying to produce something that “provides more information”, try producing something that directly satisfies someones requirements.
Who wants this information. What are they going to do with it? Lets say we are a financial institution and our terror alert is high.. what does this mean to us? How does it change our activities for today? What threat specific info would be useful in guiding us?
I think “levels” are kind of silly.. the information should be self explanatory and maybe in bulletin form. “There was an attempted bombing. We are not sure if this is isolated or part of a larger plot. Similar institutions or people in the same geographic area should be on the lookout for: whatever.” If there is a transit bombing.. then other transit institutions should be notified and some kind of established procedures should go into effect.
Using colors I think was especially silly, because paraphrasing Lewis Black (with less profanity), every time they talk about the color they have to explain what it means anyway.
Any higher level alert will be avoided as it could cause a panic and play into the terrorists' hands.
Any lower level alert will never be used because by design the war on terror is a perpetual war . And ending the crisis would constitute the government surrendering power back to the people, which they don't want to do.
Why not use probability average American will get killed in a car accident divided by probability they will be killed by a terrorist.
It gives a useful comparison, is verifiable and makes the danger level obvious to all.
"Saddam" (i.e. no threat)
"Oh shit, I might have bounced a check"
"Oh shit, I bounced a check"
"OMG"
"OMFG"
"Pant-shitting"
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Yesterday most of the TSA's whole boddy scanners were idled, and very few passengers were asked to go through them. This way the TSA was able to claim that only a small number of people opted out (since only a small number of people were made to choose between getting pornscanned or gateraped.)
So apparently, the threat of bad PR and long lines from National Opt Out Day was a bigger threat than Al Qaeda. That is a more informative datum than the color code.
So clearly, people should chill the fuck out, we are not under a great thread, and it's time to quit pornscanning and fear mongering.
And also, it's time to change the thread scale from the color code to a scale of bitchiness, i.e. how bitchy do you have to be to be considered a bigger concern than Al Qaeda. Yesterday was clearly around a 2 out of 10 (i.e. "Meh") on any bitchiness scale. Even a slight level of bitchiness was enough to be a bigger concern than Al Qaeda. If Osama and his guys get some respite from dodging the Hellfire missiles and plan an actual attack, the level will rise all the way to 10/10 ("Reno 911").
Howzat?
Can't we just re-use the big DefCon displays from Wargames?
While I realize that the submitter was just cracking a joke, it's actually pretty lame on an important level (...probably on some unimportant ones, too, but I digress).
The DEFCON (Defence Readiness Condition) system is in many ways the antithesis to the obscure TSA color-coded alerts. DEFCON assigns its lowest level (5) to the 'normal' state of preparedness -- none of this nonsense with a perpetual orange alert; if something is usual practice then that's the lowest condition.
Under DEFCON rules (or the terorrism-related FPCON rules), members of the military have specific, clearly delineated responsibilities and tasks. There is a firm grasp of the meaning and intent of each condition. In contrast, telling civilians they're facing threat level Orange (or Yellow, or Red) doesn't mean anything. We don't know what to do differently - if anything - and we don't know what might happen, or how to respond, or when the condition might be returned to normal.
Of course, I also recognize that my message header could serve as an apt description of the whole color-coded threat warning system....
~Idarubicin
Getting rid of it makes sense. Replacing it with something else doesn't. The true threat level can't be communicated to the general public as it would cause awkward questions. The current situation raises one awkward question that seems unpatriotic to ask. "Why is there always a threat of terrorism?"
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Get serious. There's a doubleplusgood reason we've always been at war with Eurasia.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Any lower level alert will never be used because by design the war on terror is a perpetual war . And ending the crisis would constitute the government surrendering power back to the people, which they don't want to do.
Well, that's the obligatory cynical take on it. The more obvious reason is: if and when the next terror attack occurs, whomever was responsible for lowering the alert status most recently would inevitably be sacked for "taking their eye off the ball". And nobody wants to be the one holding that hot potato.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It takes eight years of public mockery for the TSA to drop a useless system. Not hate, mockery.
So drop the hate and up the mockery for the rapey-scan machines, and you might be able to fly in or out of the US without the TSA looking at or touching your private parts by 2018!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
So, how will they manage to divert attention every time a political scandal happens in the US or UK?
...at the time the tests were last normalized. If American's are getting dumber at a fast enough rate his numbers could very well be correct.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace