When Revising the National Terrorism Alert System, Returning to a Meaningless Traffic-Light System Would Be a Mistake

Angelica Hickerson / October 15, 2015

Jeh Johnson, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, has asked his department to consider revising the National Terrorism Alert System (NTAS), since the last time they actually used the system was…well…never.

One of the good things that the NTAS has going for it, though, is that it isn’t the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). The HSAS was the predecessor system, famously known for its green-to-red terrorist threat color spectrum. The color-coded system was meant to indicate the severity of the current national threat level, but it lost credibility when the nation was constantly under an orange or yellow alert for no particular reason and legitimate threats rarely resulted in a color change. Moreover, the vagueness of the “traffic-light” system gave the American people no real sense of what the threat was and what they should do.

Thankfully, this old system was abandoned, and the National Terrorism Alert System was adopted in its place. The NTAS uses a strategy similar to the National Weather Service, employing a two-tiered structure: 

• Imminent Threat. Warns of a credible, specific, and impending threat against the U.S.
• Elevated Threat. Warns of a credible threat against the U.S.

The American public is already quite accustomed to the “watch” and “warning” weather alerts, so using the same format should, theoretically, prove easier to promote and remember than a bunch of colors. However, if the system is never used, it is worth examining reforms to the NTAS that could provide the public with more credible and actionable information.

No system is perfect, but in the search for the best notification system, the focus should be centered on three particular policies:

• Merging terrorist alerts into an “all hazards” system. Integrating existing terrorist alerts into a system accounting for both man-made and natural disasters would allow the DHS to appropriately and accurately spread information.
• Replacing the national alert with regional alerts. Rather than alerting the nation over matters only stemming from a particular region, that region alone could be alerted to concentrate on preparedness. This would prevent resources from being disbursed throughout the rest of the country.
• Sharing information between federal agencies and state/local law enforcement. Beyond informing the public, the U.S. needs to do more to make sure the federal government is regularly sharing information with state and local law enforcement to counter terrorist threats.

While improvements to the current system are certainly possible, the U.S. should not go back to a system with arbitrary alerts that end up getting ignored. The only way that a security alert system will prove efficient and beneficial is if it provides the public with credible and understandable information that helps citizens take action in response to a threat.