code plaid

This morning, after hearing the news about the foiled terror plot in England and the elevation of the terror threat level, I decided to check some agency websites to see how this information was being disseminated. Particularly, I wanted to check the graphic each agency is allegedly supposed to display.

Here's a tally of what I found when I checked the sites at 9:45am on August 10th, 2006:

--Customs and Border Patrol: reported the level at orange
--Office of Personnel Management: holding steady at yellow
--Federal Aviation Administration: the agency you'd think most effected, does not display the color code but did indicate, via a link on the home page: "Homeland Security raised the threat level for aviation and imposed new restrictions on carry on items."
--White House: off on the right side, you can read about the elevetad level, and also watch Tony Snow's press conference
--The Senate and the House: no display of the threat level
--Department of Homeland Security: displays the threat level at yellow, though the first entry on the home page describes the situation-- code red for flights traveling between the UK and the US, code orange for all commercial flights and those bound for the US, yellow for everyone else.

This is a prime example of how government agencies lack consistency for disseminating information that's pretty confusing to begin with.

Of course, you can always keep track of the threat level with the muppets: