I wasn’t a big fan of the alert system at first, and I agree that it can easily be used as a CYA tool or for other political purposes. If you read about what the law enforcement agencies do as a response to this it does begin to make a lot more sense. My take on it is that government is telling us:
“Hey, we think the risk of a terror attack is higher now than it was. You don’t really need to do anything differently, but be aware that you may encounter heightened security at many public places.”
Nothing nefarioius about that-- it’s actually pretty straight forward. Although I do agree that we will never see a green or red status announced, it’s probably just as well. Green would be overly complacent and red would signal panic. The scale has to have an upper and lower limit, so if we eliminated red then orange would become the default red.