The level of threat color system endured for almost 10 years despite widespread criticism, to not make a mockery, sometimes incomprehensible messages to the public. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is gradually the green-blue-yellow-orange-red palette for a system of officials say will convey more information about the threats.
"Say goodbye to orange," Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, said Wednesday in announcing the replacement system at Grand Central Terminal in New York.
Ms. Napolitano, said the new program, called the national terrorism advisory system, could be put into operation Tuesday. "High" alerts will be warn credible terrorist threats; "imminent" is warn credible terrorist threats, specific and imminent.
Alerts "will be based on specific, credible information about potential terrorist activities" and will include the "details as much as we can provide in an unclassified form", Ms. Napolitano said. They include a concise summary of the potential threat, a description of the area or the type of transport that could be affected, details on the steps the authorities take to deal with any threat and suggestions on how people can be prepared and stay informed.
Alerts will be broadcast through advertisements in press agencies and social media sites and will appear on a new website, www.dhs.gov/alert.
To avoid a series of "alerts cascade", which may mislead the public, Ms. Napolitano said, each issued alert will expire after two weeks, unless the Secretary of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies decide otherwise.
Representative Carolyn b. Maloney, a Democrat from New York, was joined by Mrs. Napolitano at the Wednesday News Conference, said that she believed that the public had hardened system color code, "where many people had essentially listening because it never ends"., and that you didn't really know what he meant. ?
Ms. Napolitano said that the new system would provide more concrete information to the public and alerts with the new system would rely on the more precise indications of the danger.
The color code system was created by a presidential directive in March 2002, during the administration of George w. Bush and noted the five levels of threat with a range of colors ranging from green (low) to red (severe).
Almost from the beginning, the system has been decried as being too vague. The fact that alerts were rarely accompanied by any specific explanation leads some people to wonder if they were sometimes used for political purposes.
"He really did not educate people about the current more or less", said Jim Parker, 46, a lawyer from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, waiting for a train in the Union Square subway station. "It seemed as the Government put on a show."
Edward Mackel, 28, a seller of supplies of Sunnyside, Queens building, said that he preferred a system which included information on the nature of the potential threat.
"You walk in an airport," he said. "See you there is an orange alert, and of course, you want to know why."
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