and I will add - its not a waste of time to have these codes. this alert forces more diligence amongst law enforcement people, which is good.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I think it's good to have different alert levels with different levels of security tied to them. I just think the color system is a little silly, especially if there are going to be different sets of levels within a color. A number system, 1-10, might make more sense, with clearly defined security measures for each number.
I guess the color system was adopted to make it easy for the rest of us to understand. But, since there's not much we can do, it doesn't really accomplish anything but panic. Especially if we don't know the difference between "low" orange and "high" orange. If the purpose of colors was to make it easy for ordinary people to understand, then they need a separate color for each level, or just scrap the whole color idea and just transmit the needed info to law enforcement.