DHS Introduces Changes To Terror Alert System

DHS Introduces Changes To Terror Alert System

This post is also available in: heעברית (Hebrew)

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on America a colour-coded alert systems was introduced. After a decade rife with criticism of the system it was phased out in 2011 in favour of a two-tier National Terror Advisory System. The new system, however, is not without faults. It set the bar so high that it has never been used.

“It has this trigger that’s a pretty high bar, which is why we’ve never used it,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said of the current system. “I believe we need to do a better job of informing the public at large about what we are seeing—removing some of the mystery about the global terrorist threat and what we are doing about it and what we’re asking the public to do.”

As an alert system that is so unresponsive to changing conditions that it has never been employed is of little use, Secretary Johnson has announced the introduction a new national alert system, to properly address the “new phase” of the terror threat.

The new system will be an expansion of the current one, adding an intermediate threat level. The new system should be better suited to the evolving threat, when “not having a specific credible piece of intelligence specifying a plot isn’t the end of the story.”

Following Johnson’s announcement, a DHS official clarified that the changes were not an introduction of a new system, but an augmentation of the current one.

“Earlier this year, Secretary Johnson directed a review of the NTAS to determine how the Department of Homeland Security can more effectively and quickly communicate information to the public and other partners regarding threats to the homeland,” the official said. “This is not a new system.”