Homeland Security forum responses

fr1.docx

Home >Government homework help >Homeland Security forum responses

Buddy Snedeker

One of the biggest issues is the sharing of information especially between state and federal agencies. The fusion centers were created in order to help support this effort. State and local law enforcement officers numbering nearly 800,000 nationwide are integral to U.S. domestic security efforts, including counterterrorism (CT). Much of these officials’ domestic security functions are carried out through a network of 78 state and urban area fusion centers, which “serve as focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners.” As the National Network of Fusion Centers has observed, “No one in government knows more than state and local officials know about what is normal or abnormal in their cities and towns” (Shapiro, 2016). These fusion centers can make a difference as long as they are operated and used properly. The sharing of information needs to be efficient amongst all the properly cleared personnel that have a need to know.

Another issue is training and interoperability. In order to do this these agencies will probably need larger budgets to keep their personnel up to date on training. However, it is important to keep consistency amongst training and experience across the agencies both federal and local. BENS’ research revealed that a lack of resources often prohibits state and local officials at fusion centers from sending their analysts to receive advanced training. This results in fusion center analysts with uneven levels of expertise and experience. SLTT officials also cited a lack of common or interoperable systems and procedures between federal, state, and local agencies as an area of genuine concern (Shapiro, 2016).

A central National leadership for domestic intelligence needs to be put in place. National leadership of the domestic intelligence posture is necessary to continuously adjust the response to a changing threat landscape, and to articulate an overall strategy to confront these threats. Since the September 11th terror attacks, the United States has created new domestic security structures, and, yet, there remains no central strategic leader or unified domestic security strategy at the federal level (Shapiro, 20). The recommendation for this would be to create a deputy position for the Director of National Intelligence to lead the domestic effort. The FBI would be the most logical choice as they are the lead agency for domestic terrorism (Shapiro, 2016).

Finally protecting civil liberties of United States citizens is another challenge that arises from this domestic effort. This is due to the fact that there has to be collection done in order to find the terrorists. This is where intelligence oversight is important to ensure there are no abuses of power happening. Having the centralized national leader would also help to ensure intelligence oversight is being adhered to.

Having central leadership over the domestic intelligence and counter terrorism effort would help with all of these issues. They could help to put together a framework that would organize this effort from training to information sharing. A cohesive team of domestic intelligence professionals who are well trained, understand the federal government intelligence community, have access to the systems/equipment they need, and can properly share information amongst the agencies would enhance the support to Homeland Security.

Burch, Assessing the Domestic Intelligence Model and Process

Hapiro, Domestic security: Confronting a changing threat to ensure public safety and civil liberties. Business Executives for National Security.