CQ Homeland Security Congress will need to get serious about a post-election immigration overhaul if the nation is to deal with the duality of enforcing border security while facilitating trade, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan D. Bersin said in discussion Thursday about his agency’s top priorities.
Extremist websites booming, but hard to police | Reuters Western authorities say the number of extremist websites is skyrocketing but taking action to remove them remains difficult and the head of a specialist British police unit said engagement was needed as well as enforcement.
Since 9/11, the U.S. government has struggled with the twin goals of reviewing visa applicants for security risks while maintaining the attractiveness of the United States as a premiere destination for business and leisure travel. As the President’s outgoing National Economic Adviser Larry Summers recently commented, improving the climate for travel to the United States may represent the most effective way to grow U.S. exports and create export-related jobs. The reasons for the relative decline in the U.S. travel market are complex, but clearly new security dictates are part of the explanation. We need to recognize the economic impact of this security, and we need to be more creative in securing the international travel system that is so valuable to our economy and foreign policy.
Secretary Napolitano’s recent Senate testimony focused on the myriad threats to the homeland and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) efforts to address them. She emphasized that the terrorist threat to global aviation continues to be significant. The ultimate goal of both DHS and the international community should be an aviation security regime based on an individualized, threat-based approach using advance information, enhanced targeting, and an interactive system to prohibit boarding or to designate individuals for additional screening measures prior to boarding.
As luck would have it, the question of all questions about TSA would not be the first questioned asked. It instead would be the last. Presiding at today’s hearing, Chairwoman Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) had the honor of asking the question on the future of unionizing the Agency’s Transportation Security Officers (TSOs). As regular readers of Security Debrief know, my friend and fellow Catalyst Partner, David Olive and I made a bet about what the first question would be at TSA Administrator John Pistole’s first appearance before the House Homeland’s Subcommittee on Transportation Security & Infrastructure Protection. Unfortunately for me, that question came at the very end of the hearing and not at the beginning, as I had bet.
By Doug Doan
Yesterday’s hearing on the salmonella outbreak that resulted in a huge recall of eggs offers important and disturbing insight into the government’s expanding role in food safety. If you ever thought that these hearings were called in an honest attempt to find out what happened, what went wrong, and what actions could be taken to prevent a similar problem and actually improve the safety of our food supply, think again. That is not how these hearings work. In fact, the hearing was really a prop for the FDA to push a favorite hobby horse of ever-expanding control, budgets, regulations and authorities.
At a full hearing of the Senate Homeland Security & Government Affairs Committee with DHS Sec. Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NCTC Director Michael Leiter, the message delivered was loud and clear. The risk of smaller scale, more individualized attacks by al Qaeda and its sympathizers within the United States is growing. Period. There should be no more blissful ignorance to our operating environment in America. It can not be afforded.
Before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, DHS Secretary Napolitano, FBI Director Mueller and NCTC Director Leiter each underscored the growing threat of homegrown terrorism and warned that there are increasing numbers of Americans inspired by al Qaeda. This summer, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released an English-language magazine, appropriately titled Inspire. This is a dangerous tool, in part because it isn’t masses of jihad-waging Americans that we foresee threatening homeland security – it’s the lone wolf radicalized in secret, which is exactly for whom Inspire was written.
Like any office space, there is plenty of banter back and forth between my colleagues and me at Catalyst Partners. While we make the arbitrary sports bets with one another, we also, from time to time, will make a bet on which member of Congress is going to ask the nastiest question at a Congressional Hearing; who will come unglued to rail at a witness; and so forth. This week, my friend and fellow Catalyst Partner David Olive and I bet lunch on what topic House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson will open the hearing with: TSA and unions or cargo screening? Cast your vote here before the hearing.
By Brian Lake
Usually when National Preparedness Month rolls around in September, you’ll find me talking to emergency managers, first responders, disability service providers, my friends, my girlfriend and the guy I met in the park while walking my dog about inclusive emergency preparedness for disability communities. This year is no different. This year has had two very significant milestones: the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. One marks how far we have come; the other marks how far we still have to go.
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