Homeland Security the Department of Homeland Security:

Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security: the National Terrorism Advisory System vs. The Homeland Security Advisory System

In the aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks, a complete review of America's counter-terrorism operations took place. What was seen as the fault in U.S. intelligence to predict the 9/11 attacks was a severe lack of information sharing between U.S. intelligence agencies, and the lack of protocol in the event of future terrorist attacks. Thus, the Department of Homeland Security was created in an attempt to bring together the informational capabilities of the various U.S. agencies working on counter-terrorism, with a command structure that penetrates the entire U.S. law enforcement system. The DHS quickly instituted its first recommendations on March 12, 2002, with the creation of the Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS), based on a colored threat scale from green to red, and protocol to be followed nationwide in accordance to the present color of the scale, beginning on that day as yellow. The HSAS scale was intended to create a broad nationwide alert system to full attention at a moment's notice, a capability that was lacking on September 11th.

The HSAS system only once reached the most severe color, red, due to intercepted information from al-Qaeda agents, on August 10, 2006. (Chronology of Changes, 1) Credible threats to commercial aircraft departing from Britain to the United States were to be targeted by al-Qaeda in an aerial hijacking. Fortunately, this attack was halted, and three days later, on August 13, 2006, the red threat was reduced to orange. In the Obama administration a new head of the Department of Homeland Security was announced, a former governor by the name of Janet Napolitano. She believed that the HSAS system was inferior, and that changes needed to be made in order to provide a more effective terrorism alert system to the public.

The Homeland Security Advisory System was replaced on May 5th, 2011 by the National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS), which changed two major attributes of HSAS. (Mathes, 1) These are the removal of the color-coded system that the American public had become so familiar with since its first use in 2002, and second NTAS requires information specific to the threat to be shared. This means area of threat, target of threat, and time of threat, if known. If a threat is seen as elevated, then it is stated so. Likewise, if a threat is seen as imminent, then that warning is used as well. The NTAS system not only provides more specific information on the source of potential threats to U.S. law enforcement, but also to the general public. This is meant to better reassure and warn citizens who are in potentially dangerous areas of the country, such as Washington DC or New York City.