UK refines its terror alert system
The UK Home Office released a report today entitled “Threat Levels: The System to Assess the Threat from International Terrorism” that refines the country’s threat advisory system. A story in The Guardian notes that the previous threat advisory system had seven levels, and was not intended as a tool for informing the general public; the new system has five levels, and is intended as a tool for public communications.
The new advisory system has five levels -like the U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System (HSAS). But unlike the HSAS, it eschews colors:
- low (an attack is unlikely)
- moderate (an attack is possible but not likely)
- substantial (an attack is a strong possibility)
- severe (an attack is likely)
- critical (an attack is expected imminently)
The change in the alert system is in response to the post-7/7 investigations in the UK, and reports that called for a greater level of public transparency in the UK government’s assessment of the threat condition.
The UK government also released a new counterterrorism strategy today – more on that in a later post.
