U.S. to implement new terrorist alert system

The U.S. government very soon will implement a new terrorist alert system designed to provide better information about the risk of attacks and to improve the response to attacks such as the one last week in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people were killed.

“We need a system that adequately informs the public at large, not through news leaks of joint intelligence bulletins to law enforcement, not through leaks from anonymous government officials,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Monday at a Defense One magazine event in Washington.

“We need a system that informs the public at large what we are seeing what we are doing about it and what we are asking the public to do,” he added.

Johnson said that the new alert system would reflect “the current environment and current realities,” although it will be a complete reversal on the issue by the Barack Obama administration, given that until the San Bernardino attack it had downplayed the need for a new, more comprehensive system designed to protect against attacks within the homeland.

Johnson reviewed the latest terrorism alert systems used after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

Replacing the colorcoded scheme adopted by the George W. Bush administration, Johnson’s predecessor, Janet Napolitano instituted the National Terrorism Advisory System, or NTAS.

The current method provides the public with a concise review of the threat perceived by the government and reports by geographic region, transportation method or infrastructure that appears to be the target of the threat, along with the methods being used to provide security for the public.

The announcement of the security changes comes after on Sunday night President Obama appealed to U.S. values to combat terrorism in an unusual speech from the Oval Office in which he defended his plan to destroy the Islamic State.

The president called the San Bernardino massacre an “act of terrorism” by U.S.born Syed Farook and his wife, Pakistani citizen Tashfeen Malik, who burst into an aid center for the disabled and opened fire at people attending an employee Christmas party being held there.

The FBI is investigating how the two attackers became radicalized, while the Islamic State has claimed that the pair were two of their followers.