I don’t know. I just don’t know.
There’s a lot of folks out there screaming in panic over the Bush proposal to create a cabinet-level Dept. Of Homelandsecurity (D’OH for short). Visions of jackbooted D’OH stormtroopers, kicking in doors and stomping on protesters are in full flight.
I don’t know. It already sounds like D’OH will be short of enforcement troops, long on bureaucracy and analysts and people trying to coordinate the Secret Service with the INS. And there are already various political forces trying to suck the law enforcement groups out of D’OH. And the FBI and CIA aren’t even included in the new department (and there are plenty of people complaining about just that).
Efficiency in the police is a measure of how good a tool they are. Efficient police can catch Bad Guys better. They can also, if they are of a mind to, persecute Good Guys, too.
So the question about D’OH is:
1. Will it actually improve the efficiency, thus the power, of our national law enforcement folks?
2. Is that a good thing?
The answer to 1 is … Reply Hazy. The intent is to do so, of course. Everyone and their brother makes it clear that the failure in pre-9/11 activities was that nobody was sharing effectively with anyone else. There was no accountability for not being cooperative, there was no incentive to be cooperative, and even where there was cooperation, there was a dearth of centralized analysis to
“connect the dots.”
The purpose of D’OH is to provide that cooperation, that accountability, and that analysis. Without the FBI or CIA under its fold, it’s not clear that will happen, but it might be easier to leverage.
So let’s look at #2. Assuming that D’OH makes things more efficient, more powerful, is that a good thing? Or a bad thing?
I don’t know. We can never have perfect security. But any time you have any sort of governmental force to try to increase security, you are empowering people who can impose on liberty, too.
People don’t trust the FBI. They don’t trust the CIA. They don’t trust the Federal Government. They don’t trust them to ensure security. They don’t trust them to not impose on liberty. And there’s good reason not to.
But … what’s the answer? Leave the status quo? That’s what let a bunch of yahoos flying planes into building — shoddy coordination. Could a more coordinated, effective, powerful D’OH prevent even one such attack? Almost certainly. Could it also crush some liberties? Almost certainly.
Is that the only choice here?