Thaindian News

Washington, Apr. 21 (ANI): The Department of Homeland Security has reduced the five-color scheme for terrorism alerts to two warnings — elevated and imminent.

The color-coded threat level system was in operation for nearly a decade, despite widespread criticism.

Now the Department of Homeland Security is phasing out the green-blue-yellow-orange-red palette in favor of a system that officials say will convey more information about the threats.

The New York Times quoted Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, as saying on Wednesday “Say goodbye to orange,” in announcing the replacement system at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

Napolitano said the new program, called the national terrorism advisory system, would be put into operation Tuesday.

She said: “Elevated” alerts will warn of credible terrorism threats; while “Imminent” will warn of credible, specific and impending terrorism threats.

The alerts will be “based on specific, credible information about potential terrorist activity” and will include “as many details as we can provide in an unclassified form,” Napolitano said.

The alerts will be disseminated through announcements to news organizations and social media sites and will appear on a new Web site, www.dhs.gov/alert.

To avoid a series of “cascading alerts” that can confuse the public, Napolitano said, each alert issued would expire after two weeks, unless intelligence agencies and the homeland security secretary decide otherwise.

Napolitano said the new system would provide more concrete information to the public and that alerts under the new system would rely on more specific indications of danger.

The color-coded system was established by a presidential directive in March 2002 during the administration of George W. Bush and denoted five threat levels with a range of colors from green (low) to red (severe). (ANI)