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even though that program is just for foreign nationals coming in - like the underwear bomber The US internal security piece is seriously lacking. With everyone surprised that the agencies weren't integrating their databases (connecting the dots) with UW bomber, perhaps the public is more receptive to the government tracking / combining more personal information. What ever happened to Total Information Awareness that got sidelined a couple of years ago because of concerns about civil liberties? Domestic CI is a difficult balance between personal privacy (individual rights) and national security. Is any agency really responsible for domestic CI? Not that I know of. LE and ARNG do internal security for individual states, but no federal agency has authority across the whole US. As big as DHS is, they will likely end up lightly, but insidiously policing internal security just because they have access to so much of the relevant resources. Like TR and HowardCohodas, I believe that we underestimate the dangers of a fifth column. Yes, the threat of extremist Muslims and Arab revolutionaries is incipient but they are motivated and lethal. Just look at Britain. I'm no expert on Verona, but recall a primary example of infiltration is the COMINTERN and the US communist party during the Cold War. Espionage was a regular activity of the American CP. It's goal was to promote communism and the ideology of the Soviet Union through political means (front groups) in the US. They infiltrated and subverted exploitable groups that included assets like sympathetic US communists. What is that quote about empires rot from within? Overreach and complacency, etc. |
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Early in my IT career I read a book titled "The Mythical Man-Month" whose central theme is that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later". Likewise, adding layers of bureaucracy to a bureaucracy that is not working cannot make it more efficient or more effective. As a side note, one of the best ideas that came out of this work is that there are many processes that cannot be improved by adding more manpower. For example, even though it might be fun to try, you cannot make a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. Also we used to say frequently "The flogging will continue until morale improves" although I cannot recall the origins of this. |
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The really crazy thing is, marketing companies and financial companies and Google already collect more personal information about us than most of us probably even know. How can critics kick the govt for not connecting the dots when the public will not tolerate a TIA-like integration? Now, is the DNI the one to control personal information about US citizens? Probably not. The FBI, ah no - remember COINTELPRO. CIA, no. Maybe IRS, no way! So it's DHS. Can you imagine? They can't even manage their own agency. In the tradeoff between what is technically feasible and what is politically palatable, technology loses to politics. Individual liberty out weights collective security. So, if we've already made that choice, why invest hundreds of billions in half-measures and gi-nor-mous bureaucracies? We can't child proof the whole USA. I think the govt's hilarious over-reaction to the pantybomber was a moment of clarity for many. |
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Yasir Qadhi, who headlined the 2008 US-Funded (our tax dollars) Counter-Radicalization Strategy Conference, and who CNN holds up as an example of “moderate Islam”, sees Western society as incompatible with Islam and seethes with hatred for non-Muslims and the West. This best illustrates what is happening in the war of ideas and deception, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended Yasir Qadhi’s Al Maghrib Institute - note the Taqiyaa: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/a...m-us-lead.html http://www.investigativeproject.org/...radicalization |
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