Originally Posted by
TXagogo
The problem is that we have a renegade agency that was created hastily as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 and is being administered in a dictatorial way and by leaders who are not in touch with the balances between security and freedom.
Originally Posted by
halls120
I've had a ringside seat Inside the Beltway on policy development ever since 9/11, and I've never been more concerned for the future of our free society than I am today.
For the first few years after 9/11, we were all on a mission to make sure the loopholes in our legal, regulatory and operational structure could not be easily pierced. For those first few years, we collectively acted in good faith as we tried to balance the need to provide better security with the Constitution. It is a little known fact (known only inside DOJ, in fact) that when one post 9/11 proposal was sent to the AG, Ashcroft rejected it, saying, I told you to be creative, but within what the Constitution allows.
Somehow, around 2007-8, we started to lose focus, and I'm not sure why. The only thing I can put my finger on is that was about the same time that the DHS HQ structure reached critical mass, along with their budget. Congress was throwing money at them, and they were hiring permanent staff and contractors by the bushel, and all of that money had to produce something. Starting in 2007, and continuing onto today, the DHS leviathan churns out policy proposal after policy proposal. Most of them are harmless, but many of them are misguided "WE MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE _____ THREAT OR PEOPLE WILL DIE" variety. The rest of us in the interagency push back, but frankly, we're on the defensive. I routinely attend meetings at the EEOB where DHS will send a half dozen people to harangue us on the issue du jour, leaving the rest of us who staff meetings with but one or two people to fight back.
Not everyone inside DHS is a security fanatic, but there is no lonelier person in Washington than a DHS employee who tries to remind his/her colleagues that there is this small item called the Constitution to consider.
Roger Cohen, writing in the NYT said it best.
I don’t doubt the patriotism of the Americans involved in keeping the country safe, nor do I discount the threat, but I am sure of this: The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.