Photo Credit and source: Department of Homeland Security.
US Terror Threat Level Still Yellow on Many Internet Websites
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Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Photo Credit and source: Department of Homeland Security. |
The US terrorist threat level was raised to Orange "for the mass transportation portion of the transportation sector" at 11:45 pm EDT in response to terrorist attacks on four areas in London, England.
Many of these scripts depend upon a small line of XML code updated by the DHS here http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition.
By clicking on it at the time of this writing (2:20 pm EDT) the result shows "THREAT_ADVISORY CONDITION="ELEVATED" rather than "THREAT_ADVISORY CONDITION="HIGH" and this means that every Web site across the Internet that depends upon this data, including BBSNews, are possibly showing the wrong graphic or at least adding to confusion surrounding the color-coded threat level system used in the United States to warn citizens of impending danger from terrorist attacks. As soon as BBSNews learned of the higher risk shortly after 11:45 pm EDT, we changed our local code to reflect in our articles that carry the warning, that the threat level was elevated to orange or High Risk (for transportation). Because of the confusion, we have added the caveat "transportation only" to our graphic.
Other Websites that depend upon the snippet of code to reflect the current threat level will show just the yellow graphic even though a portion of the US transportation sector is considered on High-Risk alert.
Users of the DHS Web site can click on http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29 for more information about threat levels. As of (2:20 pm EDT) however the threat level on the DHS Web site and the White House main site are also still showing a threat of elevated. Portions of BBSNews that depend upon the DHS code changing will be updated when or if DHS updates their XML file.
The Web scripts that proliferated after the attacks of September 11th, 2001 are tiny snippets of code written in a variety of platforms and included on many Web sites to show the current threat level. There has been some controversy about the color coded threat advisorys, many people question what exactly they should do when the threat level changes. It is unclear whether the threat level graphic is even intended to change when just a "sector" of US infrastructure is under a high risk of threat, introducing the possibility that the graphic shown on many Web sites will show a lesser threat, in this case Elevated or yellow, when the "mass transportation portion of the transportation sector" are actually under a High-Risk of an attack as reflected by the orange level, further adding to the confusion.