Could this happen to YOUR hot rod?

[Alan Roehrich]

Originally Posted by treessavoy

I think we missed one point that scares me. It is obvious that homeland security, which really has no real mission, is expanding it's tentacles into places it was never meant to be.
How long will it be before they have their fingers in everybody's pies; state, local and federal?
My prediction is that like the Gestapo they will be deeply in everyone's day to day life in the future.

JimR

Jim, I did not miss that point at all.

The original intent of Homeland Security was merely to create a "clearing house" where the various agencies could access information gathered by other agencies. There are two problems that prevent this. The single biggest is petty inter-agency rivalries. But the second is which information, collected by what method, are the various agencies allowed to have and share.

The various agencies tasked with gathering and sifting through foreign intelligence information are strictly prohibited from gathering information inside the U.S. and their territories, and rightly so. However, some information gathered inside the U.S. is actually applicable to foreign information gathering, and can be shared with those agencies, and it should be.

Homeland Security was supposed to be tasked with taking information that agencies that operate legally inside the U.S. gathered and sharing what was legal to share with agencies such as the CIA, and sharing with other agencies what the CIA and agencies of its type gathered. Homeland Security was supposed to prevent things from slipping through the cracks or being withheld. For example, the FAA had questions about the terrorists who hijacked the planes on 11 September 2001. They were very suspicious of those individuals. Had this information, and other information, been shared with the correct agencies, the whole thing might well have been averted. The CIA and other agencies like it had information on those terrorists. So did the FBI, but the information was not shared, even in instances where it was perfectly legal and acceptable, either due to rivalries, or due to the lack of the knowledge that it could be shared.

Homeland Security was not originally intended to be "the enforcement section" of any federal agency, foreign or domestic. Just like the EPA and the IRS were never intended to have units equipped with various weapons and body armor. But now every agency wants to have its very own "tactical unit", populated with "men in black", wearing body armor and carrying weapons for the intent of intimidation at best, and of armed confrontations at worst.