We've done it in intelligence sharing and certain elements of security. There were parts of the department, in fact, that worked very well in Katrina, like the Coast Guard and TSA.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Since the tragedies, the Department of Homeland Security was established to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, and most importantly, to share intelligence information among government agencies and departments.
We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.
But since September 11, we have made every effort to try to work closely with state and local law enforcement.
Before 9/11 there were weak procedures, willingness, and mechanisms for communicating among agencies for foreign intelligence and the FBI with its focus on law enforcement. The domestic-vs.-foreign barrier has been solved by the reforms after 9/11 that established the DNI.
We have got to protect privacy rights. We have got to protect our God-given, constitutionally protected civil liberties, and we are not doing that in the federal government. The Department of Homeland Security, as well as the TSA, is a great culprit in being a Gestapo-type organization.
If the Pentagon truly confined itself to providing defense, then presumably we wouldn't need a whole separate government agency to provide 'Homeland Security.'
If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.
In order to be successful against each of these threats, we have to have a presence overseas, work closely not only with our counterparts in the law enforcement community, but also with the intelligence community.
We have built as a government something called the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, NCIJTF, where 19 federal agencies sit together and divide up the work. See the threat, see the challenge, divide it up and share information.
Vetting and verifying information is one thing. Having our government sending out conflicting messages to the American people when conflict can be avoided is another.
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