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?
A programmers approach (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I agreed right up until you said geographic area.
Canada and the USA are too large. Someone making a statement could very easily attack NY, chicago, and LA all at the same time. Limiting yourself to a geographic area is limiting.
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How about "Warning! Some bad shit may happen somewhere on planet Earth! Be careful!"
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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.
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I agreed right up until you said geographic area.
Canada and the USA are too large. Someone making a statement could very easily attack NY, chicago, and LA all at the same time. Limiting yourself to a geographic area is limiting.
Then say "the USA" as your geographic area, but say "Chicago" if intelligence suggests the problem is specific to Chicago.
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the problem is the new system is just as much bullshit as the last.
saying that we are in a continually elevated threat of terrorism (at a minimum) is a complete misnomer.
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saying that we are in a continually elevated threat of terrorism (at a minimum) is a complete misnomer.
Indeed. A base level should be established and called simply "the norm". The whole "always in danger" thing seems mostly political.
Bulletins (or deviations from the norm) should be posted when a specific event happens. Some arbitrary "level" is just silly because no one is ever going to want to lower it.. which completely defeats any meaning it holds.
Re:A programmers approach (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
To prove your point "One alternative under consideration is to change to only two threat levels: elevated and imminent."
"Elevated?" From what? From what we'd like it to be? From what we assumed it was before 9/11? From
I'm guessing this is how the new threat level indicator was conceived: A TSA head was wondering how he could convince people to still be afraid and get their congressmen to keep increasing the TSA budget as he wandered into a McDonalds. He asked for a diet coke, small. The cashier said
No Emergency Broadcast System Alert 9/11/2001 (Score:5, Interesting)
I also note that on 9/11/2001 there were no Emergency Broadcast System alerts issued, even in NYC, or in DC, as both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center were violently attacked. Despite several generations of Americans being trained that such an attack would be followed by such an alert, "in the event of an actual emergency".
I wonder if those nuke warheads even work.
Re:A programmers approach (Score:4, Funny)
Burma Shave
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This is bad even for a troll. The above (like this response) has nothing to do with the article at hand, not even tangentially.
Read the masters before trolling. It takes practice, and years of refining.
Re:A programmers approach (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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Someone on here had a sig like:
"Be afraid...be yellow afraid...now be orange afraid! Good dog."
Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Alert (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]. And ending the crisis would constitute the government surrendering power back to the people, which they don't want to do.
Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al (Score:5, Informative)
It's Blakley's Law [blogspot.com]:
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.
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I think the "nuclear apocalypse clock" or whatever it's called has moved back and forth quite a bit...although always close to the highest setting.
Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al (Score:4, Informative)
Actually that's not funny if you read the post. He is contrasting the WHO flu warnings which actually work to the public alert systems like the DHS color alerts which don't. That the avian flu warning has gone down since his post while the DHS alert is still at orange (for flights) backs up his point exactly.
Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this is the problem.
The last time flew into Denver from Canada, they kept saying over the loudspeaker in the airport that we were at Threat Level Orange. I assumed this was something new and that I should brace for even worse security.
When I asked my US counterparts what was up, they basically said the same thing ... they've been at Threat Level Orange (it sounds much more official with the caps) for most of the last decade, and that they've stopped listening to it -- pretty much the whole country. In fact, they joked about it because it had ceased to be meaningful in any way. It seems to have become a perpetual state from which nobody will ever be moved. I fear, as you say, they would never allow us to go back to normal, because they'd have to give up their new-found control.
We have always been at war with Oceana (or is that us? I get so confused).
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> Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Alert
I think that a more appropriate term is Scare Level Orange.
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they joked about it because it had ceased to be meaningful in any way
In order to cease, you need to start first.
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The last time flew into Denver from Canada, they kept saying over the loudspeaker in the airport that we were at Threat Level Orange. I assumed this was something new and that I should brace for even worse security.
<voice accent="british" type="male robotic overlo^W^H">
"May I have your attention please. Please do not leave cases or parcels unattended anywhere on the station. Any unattended articles are likely to be removed without warning."
"Please do not leave cases or parcels unattended anywhere on the station. Any unattended articles are likely to be removed and may be destroyed by the security services."
</voice>
<voice accent="british" type="female robotic mistress">
"Please keep your belongings wit
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In fact, they joked about it because it had ceased to be meaningful in any way.
I was never quite clear what the I was supposed to do with the threat level information anyway.
"Threat level orange? Well then I'm going to report the guy with a stick of dynamite in his back pocket. Were it threat level green, I'd just assume he was just being prepared for some emergency demolition."
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That's actually fairly interesting. Assuming it's 100% legit, under condition green:
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Stop winging.
At "green" condition in the days when I was living in Brezhnev's Soviet Union at the age of 10 (year 4 in their school system) I was supposed to know all the first aid stuff, be able to disassemble an AK47, service it and reassemble it in under 3 minutes, know how to use a gas mask, shoot at least 70+ score (1-10 additive, 10 shots) with a sport .22 or an air rifle as well as know all civil defence codes. I left around that time, however based on what I was told by my ex-classmates it actually
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Ummm .... in Soviet Russia ... er ... ummm ... WTF?
God, I hope this isn't what we all have to look forward to. Why do I feel an urge to go down a bottle of vodka all of a sudden?
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I always thought the terror alert system should use rubber duckies. This one's name is Englebert, he says "quack quack"... [dumpalink.com]
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Yet everyone that has an IQ over 100 can see the 'terror threat level' is total bullshit... It's the other 80% of the population under 100 that is too stupid to realize these facts.
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It's the other 80% of the population under 100 that is too stupid to realize these facts.
This isn't about intelligence, though. It is about fear. Fear is an emotional state and not tied at all to intelligence. There are lots of very intelligent people who know the same facts that we do, and are still scared of a terrorist attack because they have visions of planes flying into buildings. Is it irrational? Sure. But fear has nothing to do with rationality because it is an emotional response. People will go for anything that makes them feel less afraid. Intrusive searches and security leve
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It may not be about intelligence, but it certainly is all about stupidity and ignorance - traits that enhance a person's susceptibility to self-destructive fear and political manipulation.
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Y'know, I realize you're trying to be facetious, but by definition, 50% of the population has an IQ under 100.
Of course, IQ is a meaningless number as it is. It really doesn't mean anything when expressed as a number like that. It *could* have some meaning when expressed as +/- standard deviations (though it still isn't an accurate measure of your ability to actually use that knowledge), but that'll never happen, because that would require that the population as a whole have at least a basic understanding o
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...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.
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As usual, Schneier a voice of sanity in a sea of insanity w/r/t such issues.
Re:Obsolete because we will always be at Orange Al (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
This actually makes sense (Score:2)
This actually makes sense. The "threat level orange" was getting pretty ridiculous, and political chances of the "threat level" ever returning to "green" or even "yellow" seemed awfully remote.
Re:This actually makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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?"
Ridiculous, but... (Score:2)
The "threat level orange" was getting pretty ridiculous, and political chances of the "threat level" ever returning to "green" or even "yellow" seemed awfully remote.
Technically, it was only the airports in the US that were permanently frozen at "threat level orange". Of course, most people never heard the threat level announced anywhere else, so they never realized that the threat level for the rest of the country was indeed variable.
I point this out not to defend the system - which sucks beyond any potential defense - but rather because I was myself surprised when I found this out.
How about... (Score:2)
How about a car analogy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I think it would be more intuitive if you were to swap the numerator and denominator. Otherwise, it's a good plan with much to recommend it.
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Damn it, that's the way round I intended!
I never say the complete opposite of what I mean.
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You answered your own question there.
Why not[...]?
Because...
it [...] makes the danger level obvious to all.
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Re:How about a car analogy? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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You mean a system that makes it obvious what a pitifully small risk terrorism actually is in this country? Obviously that idea is a nonstarter.
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.
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And every time you try to switch it to "Terror" instead, it explodes?
Suggested levels (Score:4, Insightful)
"Saddam" (i.e. no threat)
"Oh shit, I might have bounced a check"
"Oh shit, I bounced a check"
"OMG"
"OMFG"
"Pant-shitting"
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-"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"
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If you draw the control diagram suggested by the acronym, "PEBKAC" you will see the underlying problem with that production model.
Hint 1: it's open circuit.
Hint 2: where is your input coming from...
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Wait, isn't typing rm -rf also just a PEBKAC? The severity of PEBKACs varies greatly depending on what the keyboard is plugged into and who's sitting in the chair.
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Where's my car analogy?!
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"It's raining, roads might be slippery"
"Thick fog, we don't know what's out there but it's probably bad"
"Black ice on the road, watch out for assholes"
"Canadian winter, better move into a bunker until this blows over"
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You're driving your car. Here are your five threat levels:
1) "Sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na-na, ..." (Cruising for burgers)
2) "What an idiot!" (Where'd that bozo get a license?!)
3) "WTF?" (Damn! Where'd that car come from?)
4) "Oh, shit!" (Mother of God, please make the airbags work!)
5) Wham! (preemptive strike without warning)
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'"
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that's it for alert level monitoring (Score:2)
Oh Great!
For years, I looked at these home-built alert level gadgets and finally decided to build one myself.
-And the moment I buy a string of orange Halloween LED-lights, they decide to drop the color level system
This is a sudden outbreak of common sense! (Score:2)
The new system (Score:2)
Level 0: "Friendly pat" - no terror threat. Only theoretical, as we will never see this level.
Level 1: "First Knuckle" - be afraid citizen, but only a little, as the DHS will protect you. Now, cough, please.
Level 2: "Middle Finger" - citizen, we are going to have to "set aside" your rights for a bit. I hope you aren't allergic to latex.
Level 3: "Two in the stink" - prole, you will comply, for the good of the country.
Level 4: "Fist" - your papers are not in order. You vill follow us to the back room.
Level 5:
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Yup, level 4, but what does that really say about us?
My guess is we are too far gone to actually be able to fix this. We have only one direction to go.
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Fixing at this point in time is not required nor indeed desirable. Bend over and be taught the value of democracy and the rule of law. Your people got them for free when your state was established and have been treating them as if they had no value ever since.
Incidentally, one of the things that really soured the French monarchy for most people (including noblemen and the wealthy bourgeois!) was the advent of the "lettre de cachet". [wikipedia.org] It took them about 400 years to get sufficiently pissed off about it to act
Calibration time. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Obligatory (Score:2)
The most appropriate change (Score:2)
Replace the entire DHS with nothing. While we're at it, let's demolish the ICE black helicopter corps and every other federal domestic paramilitary department of ritual abuse.
Poorly-constructed joke (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] (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 [wikipedia.org] 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....
Inevitability (Score:2)
Sunkist asked them to drop the color-coded alerts (Score:2)
Sunkist [sunkist.com] sales were down. Nobody was buying oranges anymore, and lemon sales were stagnating too.
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And apparently nobody remembers what a lime even looks like. ;-)
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I'm Canadian. I thought USA homeland security only used yellow, orange and red.
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As am I. Green is the hypothetical color we'll never see again -- think September 10, 2001.
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As am I. Green is the hypothetical color we'll never see again -- think September 10, 2001.
You wouldn't have seen green back then anyway, or any other color for that matter, the color-coding system was introduced March 11, 2002; nobody thought it was necessary before that point.
Nice! (Score:2)
One less toy for politicians to play bullshit bingo with whenever federal elections are around the corner.
Back in the day the Bush administration simply took the whole thing too far.
Purpose of the color coded alert system (Score:2)
The best explanation of the purpose of the color system I have heard is as follows. Potential suicide bombers are, by definition, not afraid of death, because they believe that their murder/suicide will bring them paradise. They are, however, terrified of being captured. This would mean an ignominous death in a jail cell of old age, and they would be denied their afterlife reward. As a result, AQ is said to be extremely skittish. If AQ believes that a plan has been exposed, they will scuttle the plan and go
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Sooo by having a threat level ALWAYS IN THE SAME COLOR is magically keeping the baddies away? How exactlly did the current threat level stop any of the attempts we know about? After the incident last year around Christmas I believe it went up, but it was AFTER the fact.
The color system in theory may have worked if it was used properly, but it wasn't. As the summary said, keeping it at the same threat level for 4 years is a joke. If I hear that we're at orange alert that should MEAN something.
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This would, it was hoped, spook AQ enough for them to postpone or cancel the attack.
On the other hand, this could backfire: if AQ start planning their attack, and the color-level didn't change, AQ would be assured that their plan was undetected, and would be encouraged to proceed.
But as the other poster noted, it's all academic anyway, since the level was never changed from orange.
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Since it hasn't changed in years now and there still haven't been any terrorist attacks, it is apparently not needed at all.
Of course, at best it will never be better proven than the tiger repelling rock.
In other news : Alerts will be colored chickens (Score:2)
- Yellow colored chickens : Start looking at the minorities in your neighborhood suspiciously and irritatingly
- Orange colored chickens : Start moaning about good old days in doorsteps with your neighbors, and comment that "Good old {Insert-conservative-dead-president} would not let these damn {Insert-
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At which stage do we have to prepare for Radscorpions?
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wrong suggestion (Score:2)
Can't we just re-use the big DefCon displays from Wargames?
How about we have no indicator whatsoever? I know, it's a crazy, wild idea. Just hold on a sec and follow along. I know, I know, it's crazy, but hear me out. The current color-coded threat level has been derided as useless by the public. The government employees themselves don't pay attention to it. Raising the threat any higher means Bad Things Coming, and we can't lower it, for fear of the public and officials getting complacent. Homeland security is doing nothing because it's hands are tied, and t
Colours should have meaning (Score:2)
For Example: Threat level Pink - LGBT Terrorist attacks imminent. Threat level Amber - we are being attacked by missing children. Threat level Plaid - Scottish Terrorists are about to play bagpipes at us.
Department of Stupid Names (Score:2)
Now can we work on that awkward name which sounds a little too much like "Department of Fatherland Security"? How about Domestic Security Service or Dept. of Domestic Security? Or State Security Department? "Homeland" sounds far too much like something George Bush thought of while he was playing with his Al Qaeda and G.I. Joe figurines.
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Yes yes! State Security! Then you can give them the coolest badges ever! [bbc.co.uk]
Level Brown (Score:2)
I think the entire thing is off base because it does not relate to real life in any meaningful way.
Call something: level Brown and people will understand - Brown is when you shit yourself.
Level Yellow is when you piss yourself.
Level Blue - that's when you have no air left and will die from suffocation.
Etc. Things like that.
Ron White knew how to deal with this. (Score:2)
A great (or at least, silly) man once said that if he were to replace the colored threat level system, he would do it with only two levels:
And now, people know what to do when the threat level is elevated.
Also, they call him "Tater Salad."
The real purpose of the colors (Score:2)
The actual point of the colors were to make sure that the lowest 2 would never be used. It was basically a constant "Everyone, live in fear!" sign. It was ignored and/or mocked by the public because pretty much everyone realized this. I can't find the graph, but someone charted the 8 years of Bush's approval rating, with the color chart on the background of graph, and it matches up almost perfectly, to the surprise of basically no one.
I'd be great if this were a 1-party thing, since then we could simply vot
Geeks already solved this, long ago (Score:2)
And - it's right here:
http://www.geekandproud.net/terror/ [geekandproud.net]
FUCKING A YES! (Score:2)
I absolutely HATE being in Orlando International Airport and hearing a steady drone of how the current threat level is "orange." It's been that way for YEARS which proves two things: 1) it's completely inaccurate and 2) the creators never read The Boy Who Cried Wolf. [wikipedia.org]
I'm sure my airport experience will change now ... (Score:2)
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The "friend zone" is the other excused by whiners who can't get laid in addition to the "friend zone".
Bah in addition to the "nice guy myth"
Eight years (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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So, how will they manage to divert attention every time a political scandal happens in the US or UK?
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Simple, we go to Def Con 5!
That has some weight to it and it was used in War Games.
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"Simple, we go to Def Con 5!"
We already are at DefCon 5.
Please turn in your Geek card now.