Privacy Vs Homeland Security

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one, centralized agency, securing the homeland involves the cooperation and collaboration of many, different agencies and organizations ranging from local law enforcement to national agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Each of these agencies contributes to the development of homeland security intelligence. By carefully analyzing and commenting on the objectives, tasks, strengths, weaknesses, and roles of each agency, a larger picture emerges regarding the capabilities and limitation of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts.

Homeland Security is characterized by crime control being the primary police function. It is best achieved through a collective effort by all law enforcement agencies. One of the strategies being used is Intelligence Led Policing. This strategy is not new, it can be traced back to the British is the 1990’s (Bailey, 2011). Intelligence Led Policing is an approach to crime that deals with all crimes and threats including terrorism. This approach is unique because it is threat driven instead of incident driven. It also is a long term approach and focuses on causes and conditions that add to crime through a collection of data.

Defining National Security VS Personal Privacy is a matter of looking at the basic nature of each. From research collected there is a consensus that we need balance. Too much of one hurts the other and vise versa. There are a couple of articles that range from Civil Liberties to the birth of public right to know that support the overall claim. Talks about the effects of censorship in different situations like war and peace will help prove that a balance needs to be forged. The problem here isn’t the definition of personal vs national security, but the survival of each in light of each other. There is history in our nation

Good evening to all. I hope all is well this week. As many of you have stated, I thought I had a descent grasp of the United States Intelligence oversight. However, to my surprise I found that I actually did not have as good of an understanding as I thought. My shortcoming was in understanding just how convoluted the system is. The system has evolved over the years just as many things do. However, the system still has a long way to go before it’s as effective as it could be. Former Under Secretary Charles Allen noted that “virtually any terrorist attack on the homeland that one can imagine must exploit a border crossing, a port of entry, a critical infrastructure, or one of the other domains that the department has an obligation to

The 1776 united States of America Declaration of Independence contain the words that succinctly describe our national objective, strategy, and message, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In today’s United States of America, the world acknowledges American’s as the preeminent owner of individual freedoms, holding and promoting these three basic principles for some 240 years. During these years, the U.S. has employed the use of intelligence to shape its objectives and strategies, and then in times of war used the same intelligence to shape strategic messages against foreign powers. However, as hostilities decline and give way to the restoration of relative peace, the use of intelligence for strategic messages against foreign powers ceases. Under these circumstances, the void created by secession of U.S. messages, provides a communication opportunity to foreign powers for transmission of anti-U.S. messages. Attempts have been made to reinstate the offices that during war countered these anti-U.S. messages to a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S Government intelligence community. This paper does not support creation of a new agency or department to utilize existing strategic intelligence.

What is homeland security? The exact definition of homeland security is “Precautions taken by the government of specified country against terrorist attacks” according to Dictionary.com. However, when it comes to protection, are the people of the US willing to give up their natural civil liberties? The civil liberties, found in the Bill of Rights, are the people’s fundamental rights; such as freedom of speech, religion, and even privacy. These rights are protected by law against unwarranted governmental interference on their lives. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”(from npr.org).

DHS's primary tasks are to foster the sharing of foreign and domestic intelligence information between federal, state, and local intelligence and law enforcement agencies and improve border security. This has important implications in terms of personal privacy.

People in America are having their rights that regard privacy taken away. This nation's security is related to the Writs of Assistance.The Writs of Assistance was passed in 1761. This law was forced on the colonists by British rule. It was an order issued by the court that commanded law enforcement officials to search any home for smuggled goods. This law was an invasion of privacy towards the colonists. Officials could come into their homes without a search warrant. The Writs of Assistance and the United State’s security are both spying on the people’s personal information. Having privacy dominates over having security because privacy is more important for the citizens of the United States, the company Apple was right to not unlock the phones

The topic of national security vs. personal privacy, in recent events, has been very controversial regarding which is more appropriate. On one hand, the government can search through personal, private files without any consent from the owner, thus making the information no longer private. The opposing side argues that the government is invading personal privacy of innocent civilians, violating the Fourth Amendment Rights to prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures. Both have valid points, both positive and negative; however, the invasion of personal privacy by the law is only justified in a dire, life or death situation. The government should not have the ability to view private information in an everyday situation because it is a strong violation of the Fourth Amendment, it is too invasive, and it bypasses the limits of personal privacy when necessary. Therefore, the government should not be able to view personal, private information of civilians unless absolutely necessary.

An example of history repeating itself is the similarity of the sequence of events between the Palmer Raids and the NSA’s PRISM program. Both of these events in U.S. history started with Americans calling on the government for protection. The government then responded by creating programs to protect, but while working to protect the government in both events used illegal practices. These practices soon were leaked which caused americans to not support the government’s ways of protection. They even opposed it so much that they even took steps to terminate the programs.

and ensure resilience to disasters. In order to achieve these goals, intelligence is necessary. The Office of Intelligence and Analysis, a subsection to the DHS focuses on obtaining and analyzing intelligence and puts them into the Homeland Security Enterprise which primarily

Intelligence is a dependable instrument of its own to generate information that establishes the base of National Security in the United States. Intelligence has been used since the beginning of history to provide information on enemy threats and how to prevent a mass disasters. It has been used for wars, national security, military tactics, etc. Intelligence has been available since the revolutionary war and our first president George Washington and other leaders of the world have used intelligence to protect their countries. Intelligence is the dominant and the backbone of homeland Security and it is ceaseless learning about it. National Intelligence agents train tirelessly to fight and create

Homeland security works around the clock to provide safety for not just our country, but for the entire world. Over the years there have been constant improvements to homeland security. The capabilities of intelligence gathering have been bolstered by the numerous agencies at different levels of our government, coordination between agencies, and even the very strategy used to analyze the data.

The tension between national security and individual privacy has long existed even before the development of digitized information. Recently, two main forces have advanced the debate over this balance to the forefront of the public eye: 1) the proliferation of data by private sector companies and 2) the heightened need for homeland security and public defense. With the rapid evolution of technology, companies have aggregated pools of consumer data to improve upon internal decision making. In some cases, however, this data can be leveraged to ensure national security and public safety. This juxtaposition of enterprise and security results in a blurring of the line dividing public and private sector responsibilities. The question becomes an issue of moral obligation versus legal responsibility. What are we as consumers and citizens willing to sacrifice in exchange for safety? And does the private sector inevitably succumb to obligations originating from the public sector?

Some people maintain that privacy is more important than national security, but is what they are doing in their own home a threat to national security? Many Americans think that the government should not be spying on its citizens to detect and search for possible terrorism or future attacks. "A majority, 57 percent, said that the leaks about the surveillance programs would not affect the ability of the United States to prevent future terrorist attacks, while 30 percent said the fact that the programs had been made public would weaken the government’s efforts to prevent terrorism." (1 Michael) A person has a right to privacy, but to what extent, if the nation’s security is at risk?