Political Science

After the 911 terror attacks the concept of domestic security has changed drastically and our government has responded to it with a good measure of change with our existing law enforcing agencies. Since 911, several changes have been made to help the law enforcing agencies across the board. The biggest of them all is the enforcement of the Department Of Homeland Security. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 ensures better performance among our security branches to an extent that these agencies are now working together and collecting, analyzing and disseminating information together. I think that the US has more effectively reorganised the government structures to ensure security for our citizens. Before 911 there were sundry law enforcing agencies that took care of the entire security system of this nation and lack of cooperation and coordination betwen them was a common complaint. Sdudies showed that this drawback on the part of our agencies collaborated to the undected terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Now all security agencies have come under one umbrella organization and that is The Daparment of Homeland Security.
                   
I think that the responsibilities put on the head of the secretary of the HS is too big to handle. The secretary has to look into the overall performance of the HS and in addition to that he has extra tasks to resolve turf battles, incostistent and overlapping missions, budgetary problems etc. So I think that its too heavy a task to handle for one person. One suggestion is that to decentralize the whole Department of Homeland Security to the regional centres to overcome problems that this organization is facing now. I think thats a good idea. It will not add up to another layer of bureaucracy rather it will strengthen the whole organization by locally monitoring individuals and ground level of intelligence work. I do not tink that the law enforcement agencies alone are capable of collecting data on the threats originating inside or outside of the US aginst us. Previously the FBI was given the sole task of tackling terrorism inside the US border and US Secret Services were used as a tool to collect and research data gathered outside of US border. Sharing information between them was rare and complicated. Under the Department Of Homeland Security this task is going to be more accureate and easy since all agengies are working now under HS.
                     
The process that I would recommend to set up to share law enforcement data with intelligenge community is to create a council or a special committee within Homeland Security. The task of this councilcommittee will be to collect data from both CIA and other intelligenge services and tranfer them directly to law enforcement branches across the nation and vice versa.