As of today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is under the leadership of Acting Commissioner Jayson Ahern. Commissioner Ralph Basham retired after decades of public service on Friday and leaves CBP in the good hands of Ahern.
Janet Napolitano dove into the Congressional Hearing pool today making her first appearance as DHS Secretary before the House Homeland Security Committee. The nearly three hour session (which included two recesses for floor votes) was as much a listening session as it was a “listing” session where Members gave her their respective thoughts and concerns. From the future of FEMA to interoperability, here are some highlights.
Congress set an arbitrary deadline on cargo scanning that was made without any semblance of a risk-based analysis, without regard to the sovereignty of foreign governments with whom the Obama Administration says it wants better relations and without any economic analysis of the impacts of their mandate. Congress had a knee-jerk reaction and acted stupidly (in my opinion) in mandating measures that do not measurably add to the safety or security of the supply chain.
The congressional mandate to scan 100 percent of all cargo coming into the United States has questionable security value and will assuredly disrupt the global supply chain process, further undermining American commerce, jobs and the economy at a time when the U.S. economy is already struggling.
Coastal shipping should be thought of in a preparedness and recovery context. Similar to the maritime evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11, an American Dunkirk, or how coastal shipping helped get the Gulf coast going again after Katrina (after the Jones Act was temporarily suspended), rebuilding America’s maritime infrastructure would bring intangible yet critically valuable security benefits.
What I found most promising on the new Administration’s posted agenda for Homeland Security was its section, “Modernize America’s Aging Infrastructure.” It details three priority areas – Build in Security; Create a National Reinvestment Bank; and, Invest in Critical Infrastructure Projects. Under these three areas, the Obama Team is proposing a radical departure to how we as a nation have long decided, invested and designed our nation’s infrastructure.
Implementing new cargo-scanning regulations that have questionable security value and will assuredly disrupt the global supply chain and further undermine American commerce, jobs and the economy at large seems like a remarkably bad idea.
One of the most misunderstood programs at DHS has been the US-VISIT program. In some ways, US-VISIT has been a victim of its own success. It is now facing new opposition as the program attempts to expand the program. Where US-VISIT has drawn the most criticism, however, is usually a result of some aspect of the original blueprint going unfunded or getting bogged down by Congressional pushback. Thus the idea of a single “person-centric” biometric database for all visitors visiting or working in the U.S. remains unfulfilled.
Congressional Research Service: “Ocean Piracy and Its Impact on Insurance” December 3, 2008 Summary Many Members of Congress are concerned about the sharp rise in pirate attacks in the strategic waterways in the Gulf of Aden off the East coast of Africa. The hijacking of a Saudi Arabiaowned oil tanker, Sirius Star, off the coast […]
From an operational perspective, the Mumbai terrorists’ tactics were not new or novel. The planning and preparation was thorough. The frontal assault and attacks – hit-and-runs and seize-and-holds – were directed at soft targets to maximize casualties. While some attention has been paid to the amphibious mode of infiltration, we know now that U.S. signals intelligence was passed to Indian intelligence warning of a potential soft target attack via a maritime route.
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