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?

Comments

A programmers approach

[Anrego]

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.

Re:A programmers approach

[Anrego]

"News for nerds"

A large portion of the slashdot crowd (and nerds in general) have an interest in security (and security theater).

This is more slashdot-ish than a lot of stuff I've seen in the last few years.

Re:A programmers approach

[sjames]

No system can help. It's not the specificity of the system that's the problem, it's that it's being run by Chicken Little.

The terror threat went to RED, meaning attack imminent based on the group in the U.K. that were allegedly working on a binary explosive. What we don't hear as often is that it could never have been made to work ever (unless they could somehow talk the flight attendant into letting them take 50 pounds of ice into the lav), and they didn't even have passports needed to board a flight to the U.S. In spite of that, we still can't take liquids on the plane to this day. (BTW, the final result of the chemistry is a white crystalline powder, so it's not like the liquid ban will help if they mix it in advance).

The terror threat NEVER got below yellow even for a second. An alarm that never stops sounding eventually becomes background noise and then means nothing at all.

Meanwhile, the special procedures supposed to go into effect with a higher threat level never actually caught anyone doing anything anywhere. Not once.

People don't make fun of the alert system because it was inherently silly, they make fun of it because the people running the system are silly. The color code just provides us with a gauge of how silly they are.

People will make fun of the new system as well. That's not because of the system, it's because the same silly cowards will be running it.

Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Alert

[mysidia]

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.

How about a car analogy?

[Jojoba86]

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.

Re:How about a car analogy?

[Jeremi]

Why not use probability average American will get killed in a car accident divided by probability they will be killed by a terrorist.

Because then the Palin administration will successfully reduce the threat of terrorism by banning seat belts.

Suggested levels

[Trip6]

"Saddam" (i.e. no threat)
"Oh shit, I might have bounced a check"
"Oh shit, I bounced a check"
"OMG"
"OMFG"
"Pant-shitting"

Calibration time.

[Apuleius]

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?

Re:This actually makes sense

[MrMickS]

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?"

Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al

[Jeremi]

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.

Eight years

[GameboyRMH]

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!