Homeland Security Drops Color-Coded Terror Alerts 183
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?
Everyone knows... (Score:0, Funny)
... that Mauve is the Universally recognised colour for danger.
Replacement (Score:5, Funny)
I bet the replacement will be 2-way switch with labels "Terror" and "More Terror" glued shut in the latter position.
Re:A programmers approach (Score:4, Funny)
Burma Shave
I think we should use textures... (Score:4, Funny)
...as threat indicators, I mean come on, how cool would it be to hear "*ding**dong*The Department of Homeland Security has deemed the current threat level to be 'Tapioca'"
Re:Suggested levels (Score:3, Funny)
-"It's just a PEBKAC"
-"Goddammit, one of the RAID drives died"
-"Aww fuck, the PHBs are switching us over to Outlook"
-"What do you mean, you typed rm -rf?"
-The Data Centre is now a swimming pool"
Re:A programmers approach (Score:3, Funny)
How about "Warning! Some bad shit may happen somewhere on planet Earth! Be careful!"
Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al (Score:4, Funny)
Ok then, here's my public status indicator: #FFFFFF
That is all.
Re:Suggested levels (Score:1, Funny)
I think you meant:
-"It's just a PEBKAC"
-"Goddammit, one of the RAID drives died"
-"What do you mean, you typed rm -rf?"
-The Data Centre is now a swimming pool"
-"Aww fuck, the PHBs are switching us over to Outlook"
Re:Replacement (Score:3, Funny)
And every time you try to switch it to "Terror" instead, it explodes?
Re:A programmers approach (Score:3, Funny)
I agreed with you until you said planet Earth.
The solar system is too large. Someone making a statement could very easily attack the Washington Monument, the face on Mars and the Apollo landing site all at the same time. Limiting yourself to a planet is limiting.
Re:A programmers approach (Score:3, Funny)
Someone on here had a sig like:
"Be afraid...be yellow afraid...now be orange afraid! Good dog."