Silly Security Advisory System

Some time ago, the US Department of Homeland Security created a color-coded alert system to represent the terrorist threat.  Effectively, this is a 1-5 scale with 1 (green) being "low" risk to terrorist attack, and 5 (red) being "severe" risk to terrorist attack.  Why does my title call this silly?  Name one politician with the cajones to set the threat level to "low".  The threat will never be low, because the fallout for the president who declares the threat low just before an attack, even a small one, will be far too great.  How about a "guarded" (2) threat?  This isn't much better than a low threat.  It just means a "general" threat, and again the cost of being wrong will be too high.  So, they invented a 1-5 scale with only 3-5 being meaningful.

OK, then yellow (3, "elevated") is the normal risk.  This is in fact the usual threat level.  This is the lowest level that actually conveys some sort of threat.  What does "elevated" mean? 

3. Elevated Condition (Yellow). An Elevated Condition is declared when there is a significant risk of terrorist attacks. In addition to the Protective Measures taken in the previous Threat Conditions, Federal departments and agencies should consider the following general measures in addition to the Protective Measures that they will develop and implement:

• Increasing surveillance of critical locations;
  
• Coordinating emergency plans as appropriate with nearby jurisdictions;
  
• Assessing whether the precise characteristics of the threat require the further refinement of preplanned Protective Measures; and
  
• Implementing, as appropriate, contingency and emergency response plans.

This doesn't make logical sense.  Government will increase surveillance.  Increase relative to what?  Relative to normal surveillance?  This level is normal surveillance.

When do we start coordinating efforts across the spectrum of security agencies?  Only at level 4 risk.  Shouldn't this coordination be commonplace?  Isn't lack of coordination between security agencies part of the problem identified in the 9/11 commission report?  Yet, according to this alert system, we still won't do this as part of normal activity, which is level 3.

I understand the government is trying to do something, but can't we get something a little better than this?  Sounds like politician's logic to me (taken from the British comedy series Yes Prime Minister): we have to do something, this is something, therefore we have to do it.