I discovered something strange and disturbing about the Department of Homeland Security today when the graphics showing the Homeland Stupidity Threat Advisory were no longer appearing at the top of the site.

As sort of a running joke, the threat advisory borrowed from a script that DHS used to provide to display a threat advisory image. That script now gives a 404 error, meaning it’s been removed.

I’m almost certainly not the only one who was using it to display the latest homeland security advisory level.

So I went around to find out what else has changed at the department’s Web site.

As it turns out, the threat advisory they display is also an image, which you can see here:

They also have images for the next two higher levels, High and Severe:

But for the next two lower levels, Guarded and Low, there is nothing. If you don’t see images below, then they don’t exist.

What does this mean?

Some would say it means that DHS doesn’t expect the terror level to drop below Elevated anytime soon — or perhaps ever.

Or maybe someone just forgot the graphics. After all, the webmaster over there is very busy jacking off.

Update 11:47 pm: Well, that was fast! The “Guarded” and “Low” images are now on the DHS web site. So much for the conspiracy theory, boys. Looks like it was just plain old stupidity.

Update 11:54 pm: Well, maybe not so fast. The DHS web site is actually a collection of mirror sites hosted by Akamai, and so the images have to be uploaded to every single server before everyone around the world will see them. Eventually (within the next few hours) you should see all five images. If you don’t, or if the images come and go when you reload the page, leave a comment, and maybe the DHS webmaster will come along and fix it. Or maybe not.

Update Oct. 19, 2006: The incompetent boobs at Homeland Security redesigned their Web site and moved everything around, and the advisory images are no longer available. Thanks a lot, you idiots.