Since this doesn't seem apparent to some people, let's go over why the Homeland Security Advisory System is bound to cause more harm than good.
1. The Advisory System is based on relative words which have no objective value to them. Severe? High? Elevated/Significant? Guarded/General? In the muddled vocabulary of government-speak (or worse, Mil-speak), what do these words mean? If Severe, should we expect the National Guard to patrol the streets? If Elevated, should we merely be turning in our treasonous grandmothers?
2. These colors and words by themselves do nothing to alert the general public to the nature of a given threat-- is it in the water supply? a pocket-nuke? a birkenstocker buying fair-trade coffee instead of synthetic American?
3. Security alerts without clarifying information will indeed raise alertness levels, but it will almost certainly also induce higher anxiety levels and a greater inclination to panic, and if this panic is not followed by an event, then the next wave of security alerts will result in apathy and disinclination to pay attention, thereby undermining the system itself.
4. It's just plain goofy. It's like something a bunch of 8th graders would come up for a project based on 1984: "Hey, Bobby, what could we do to illustrate ways of panicking people and keeping them disinformed?" "I know, we'll flash colors to simulate varying levels of expected xenophobia!" "Man, that's TIGHT!"
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