The Changing Role and Function of Homeland Security in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT

Homeland security is the name of whatever action is taken by the United States' Government agencies to protect the nation and its citizens. The issue of what homeland security actually entails, however, is still as much of an issue as it ever was; possibly more, now that the definition has had to expand to include new agencies and new ideas. As the world moves further into the 21st century, we look at how the ideas behind homeland security are changing, and how it is dealing with increased terrorist threats. The issues behind using local agencies such as the police as agents of homeland security are explored from both sides, as are issues such as increased population size and movement; the effect population movement has on homeland security and advancements in technology.

Our research focused on getting as three dimensional an idea of the challenging issues as possible, and the results that can be read more fully at the end of the paper are that homeland security continues to adapt to the changing circumstances of the new century as well as it can, while still debating the pros and cons of direct and visible military involvement in the security process.

I. INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces the current state of homeland security, the changing context of homeland security, and details of the research and methodology used in the research. It also considers the context of the subject under scrutiny by pointing out the opposing viewpoints.

This research investigates homeland security as a whole – what it is according to various people, and what the term means as we move further into the 21st century in a changing society.

The term “national security,” as it is currently understood, reportedly was rarely used before the late 1940s. When President Truman asked Congress in 1945 to establish what initially was called a “national defense council,” the term “defense” was soon replaced by the word “security.” “Defense” seemed too narrow an idea. Security was selected “to emphasize the need for a broad and comprehensive front” to protect the nation. Truman’s effort subsequently led to the creation of the National Security Act and the National Security Council.

While homeland security as a term has been around since at least the forties, it only really came into the national consciousness after 9/11. The attacks were a game-changer in a lot of ways – not only did it bring homeland security – whatever that phrase may mean - into the public consciousness, it also brought about changes to the concept of homeland security, which are looked at below.

One approach we took in this research was to look at the actual phrase ‘homeland security’ itself, from multiple angles. Where Smith takes the purely academic path of trying to reconcile all the different ideas behind the phrase homeland security so that a more concrete idea can be used when teaching, Bellavita looks at the concepts of homeland security from a more practical viewpoint, which is a path that most of the articles we used in this paper seemed to take. We thought that defining homeland security would be an interesting place to start because of the variety of definitions, not only of the phrase itself but also of what homeland security actually entails beyond the generic notion of ‘keeping the homeland safe from threats.’ The purpose of this section was to learn how things stood when it came to the current state of homeland security, both in terms of people’s understanding of the phrase, and the state of homeland security as a whole.

We also took a look at the inclusion of the military in homeland security. We found most of the research on the military to be a better fit under the section about preparation for terrorism, but we included some of our findings in this section since we were looking at the current state of homeland security, and that current state involves the military. Several of our sources held the opinion that the Department of Defense should be more closely involved “with federal, state and local agencies in their homeland security activities,” including Steve Bowman in his report to Congress on the involvement of the military in homeland security concerns.

The one thing that all the sources we looked at agreed on was that 9/11 was what changed the nature of homeland security. The terrorist attacks in New York led to increased military involvement and presence in homeland security, in terms of the actual use of military equipment in flyovers of American cities, and also in terms of manpower visible at important sites of infrastructure. If what Bellavita says is true, that homeland security is ultimately about preventing terrorism, then the army should be perfect for the role it is beginning to play in homeland security since the security of the nation surely extends to situations outside of that nation’s borders as well as situations within them.

In her article on homeland security, Beresford, in a call-back to the previous section, breaks down the term homeland security into two different areas, “homeland defense” and “civil support” both of which are used to delineate different areas of homeland security. What I find interesting about Beresford’s approach is that she insists that, under these terms, the military cannot and will not help with the aftermath of any national disaster, be it natural or manmade. This is perhaps a call-forward to her ambivalence on the subject of military involvement in homeland security (see the end of the main section of this paper for a brief discussion of the people who do not like the idea of military involvement) but taken by itself, it is merely a confusing stance to take. As we noted when discussing Bellavita, the military has training in various aspects of disaster recovery, including medical aid; dismissing these skills and the ready manpower presented by the military would surely be unthinkable.

Larson and Peters stand in direct opposition to Beresford on this point, saying that the military would stand ready to help in the aftermath of any disaster. Their article states that, in a breakdown of all the different situations which could fall under the aegis of homeland security, “the Army is in a supporting role to civil authorities.” It makes more sense to me that the army should be able to assist in disaster recovery efforts and not just in active military threats since as we mentioned before, the military does train their soldiers in first response and disaster rescue. One area that Larson and Peters don’t cover in their article, however, is Beresford’s contention that having the military function as part of the homeland security complex will leave them spread too thinly, with their obligations outside the homeland being added to in the form of the duties of homeland security.

An important theme that came out of the research was that homeland security can be broken down into constituent parts as often as people like, but in the end, it is basically a basically holistic process. To paraphrase Bellavita, there are many different definitions of homeland security, not all of which require the same people to be involved.

It’s important to remember that homeland security involves many different situations: Terrorism, All Hazards,Terrorism and Catastrophes, Jurisdictional Hazards, Meta Hazards, National Security.

Not every single of the items on this list will use the same resources or agencies to deal with the repercussions because not all of them will result in the same situation. While purely domestic threats should be under the purview of the domestic authorities such as the Department of Homeland Security and the police, terrorist threats both in and outside the country are perhaps best left to the military and other agencies that work outside the nation’s borders.

The homeland security effort is helped along by the legal system which is enacting its own checks on terrorism. According to Melia, new laws are going on the books which treat terrorist threats and terrorism more harshly than crimes perpetrated by citizens of the nation. This phenomenon is called “enemy criminal law” in her paper on “Terrorism and Criminal Law” and can have some unfortunate implications. Enemy criminal law distinguishes between citizens of the nation and terrorists (i.e. non-citizens), which ultimately ends up causing a rift between citizens and non-citizens. As Melia says, from my point of view—and this is the common opinion of criminal theorists trained in the civil law tradition—the criminal law’s current response to terrorism in the Western world is grossly disproportional to the kind of harm that is threatened by terrorist offenses, even if one takes into account the differences between terrorist crimes and common offenses.” Melia, “Terrorism and Criminal Law,” 110.

Such draconian measures have two potential problems with them: the most well-known outcome of ‘enemy criminal law’ in our world today is Guantanamo Bay, and people may begin to fear that their actions will end up leading them into the territory of enemy criminal law – the laws themselves may turn out to help terrorism in creating an atmosphere of fear by themselves. If people do not trust the laws, that will make it much more difficult for them to trust the people who make the laws, which would not create an ideal situation for homeland security to thrive in.

The role of localized agencies when it comes to homeland security efforts is complicated to analyze. Which agencies are being referred to, and at what level – police, local government or state government – is a subject up for debate. The papers we looked at focused on police departments and their role in homeland security over other local agencies, so our research focused on that.

Since 9/11, the policing focus has appeared to shift toward homeland security. Whether this represents a shift to a new policing philosophy or a modification to an existing one is unclear. Are community policing and homeland security policing compatible?

Our research also covered the list of duties that the Department of Homeland Security was working from when it was working towards public safety, which, along with Friedmann’s ideas of what made police work so compatible with homeland security work, gave us a framework for our research into why policing was seen by many as an integral part of the homeland security process. The process started after 9/11, when the federal government discovered that the tactics it had used to keep its citizens safe during the Cold War would work anymore, and also that these tactics no longer worked against organizations which were strictly decentralized in nature.

There are always people who disagree with whatever solution is proposed, and this situation is no different. Certain authors we came across in our research were firmly against the idea of using police as an on-the-ground force for homeland security, with O’Hanlon, in particular, being against equipping local emergency response units on the grounds that it would be untenable, and another suggesting that having local police becoming more attuned to public safety in the sense of the security of the nation as a whole would end up neglecting public and individual safety in the community. There are good points being made on either side of the debate, and it is a valid point that a focus on homeland security as a whole should not come at the cost of the safety of communities or individuals.

The focus of the research in this section was to conduct an examination of the effects of advancing technology on homeland security, and more specifically on the effects of that technology on the TSA as they attempt to keep airports safe. With this research, we will attempt to show several sides of the debate over the x-ray scanners used to screen passengers, as well as discuss the use of biometric fingerprint and iris scanning. I will also discuss the use of cameras from both sides of the equation (usage by government agencies versus usage by civilians) and the new phenomenon of cell phones which enable the user to connect with the internet and social networking sites, with the potential to undermine public safety, however unwittingly, while doing so.

The changes in population happening because both of longer lifespans and also greater economic affluence have presented a new angle for homeland security to work on. As we will see, both of these factors joined together to contribute to people wanting to travel more, and security has to change to deal with the growing weight of travel both nationally and internationally.

As we shall see, even simply taking the numbers of people who wished to travel nationally and disregarding those who left the country, the number of people recorded as moving across states lines was considerable. Movement of people from New York to Florida, for one example, showed that people were taking advantage of both their economic status and their longer lifespan, since they were moving from one expensive state to another, and Florida is popular as a retirement destination. Even without looking at those details, the figures involved show that people are enjoying greater economic freedom since even if they were looking for a cheaper living area, moving is not cheap.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

A review of the literature will outline the theories and concepts that inform our understanding of homeland security as a whole and ultimately, an understanding of the role homeland security will play as we continue into the 21st century. The first section will review the literature on homeland security. This section will examine the general ideas behind homeland security and look at the variety of definitions that people hold regarding it. This section should provide a framework to understand the changing role of homeland security in the new century. The second section of the literature review can be divided into two parts and will consider the reasons why homeland security is changing. The first part will focus on the advancements that have been made in technology. By looking at this, we will begin to understand the implications of certain technology for homeland security, both in terms of using it to increase security and also avoiding the illicit use of such technology to undermine security. The second part will focus on the changes in society which may affect homeland security, such as implications of population growth and growing multiculturalism.

With the two sections above, I have as far as possible considered homeland security from the perspective of both the population as a whole and the agencies in charge of homeland security. I also want to consider the space in which homeland security operates, in terms of what people actually think of the involvement or not of certain agencies and groups in it. The physical space in which homeland security is played out will inform our understanding, but there is also an important mental element that should be considered as well. Investigating this mental element is necessary if we want a full understanding of homeland security.

Finally, in order to bring the paper back to the beginning, we did some research on security from a different angle – we looked at personal security. At its core homeland security means keeping the people safe, but if they don’t feel safe, then there seems to be little point in increasing security measures. Terrorism is defined as an act that is perpetrated to keep people in fear – and these people as a whole look to the security forces to protect them from that fear. If the agencies in charge of homeland security are not seen to be fulfilling that role, then homeland security will not be a success.

Reviewing the Term “Homeland Security”

This section consists of an overview of homeland security. It will begin by examining the many definitions of homeland security available in the literature and look in greater detail at the agencies involved in homeland security. It will examine the various ideas people have and the themes which often come into play in the writing on homeland security, as well as considering and quoting specific examples of homeland security and its involvement in the general politic\social environment. Following this, it will briefly look at the writings which disagree with the processes employed in homeland security and the agencies which have a hand in it.

The approach taken to understand the term homeland security was extensive. It began with a thorough search of ProQuest and JSTOR using a variety of forms of the words “homeland security” including homeland security, national security, and civil defense. Of course, the difficulty in any research into homeland security is precisely the variation in the many names attributable to it. Bhaskar, Kapoor et al. and Middlemiss and Gupta identify the words homeland security and national security as interchangeable within the literature. We have also, within the research done for this project, seen “civil defense” and “national security” used in place of homeland security.

Whilst this lack of an agreed definition could be considered a hindrance, it provides an excellent opportunity for us to look at the term from a variety of different perspectives, including the perspective of writers who do not agree with the changes being made to homeland security in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Researching these definitions will provide us with insights into the complexity of homeland security, as well as providing us with a platform of definitions from which the many different practical and theoretical aspects of homeland security in a changing society can be investigated. Much writing has been done concerning the use of the military in dealing with homeland security events, but I have consciously put the arguments against the involvement of the military in the future at the end of this paper, and in this section of the paper will focus on the real-life applications of homeland security as they stand in a world which is changing every day. Another barrier we encountered in our research was the possibility that we might not be able to show the full debate surrounding homeland security in the 21st century, so to counter this, we specifically sought out several sources which are either directly from websites of the various departments involved in homeland security, or are written by people who have a personal stake in the security complex.

To understand homeland security, we will consider homeland security and the response to increased terrorism individually and hopefully establish the way in which homeland security has evolved. Considering homeland security from the perspective of an outsider is something which Smith, Bellavita and Bhaskar, Kapoor et al. all do in different ways, which allows us to gather a well-rounded perspective of the ideas of what actually constitutes homeland security. Similarly, looking at Beresford and Brooks among others will help us to understand the role of the military within homeland security as a whole. Smith looks at homeland security from a purely theoretical viewpoint, stating that his purpose is to encourage “academicians and practitioners to move beyond a rather instrumental definition and towards the development of a fuller conceptual definition of homeland security” which is different from the more practical approach taken by both Bellavita and Bhaskar, Kapoor et al. Since we are, at this stage in the research, trying to establish what homeland security in a general sense entails, having a definition that incorporates both practical and theoretical ideas should be helpful to us.

Homeland Security Response to Terrorism

Homeland security changed when terrorism began to come to the fore in world politics. For this part of the paper, we continued to use Bellavita as one of the sources and added in Bowman and Melia for the main sources in order to gain an understanding of the role of terrorism in changing the ideas behind homeland security. Bellavita is the one who puts forward the idea that “at its core, homeland security is about preventing terrorism and responding appropriately when we are attacked” and both Bowman and Melia appear to agree, with Bowman making the point that the army has the largest and most diversified set of personal assets available to it of any other agency. No matter what disaster has happened, surely the primary objective of any government agency would be to help those in danger from the disaster and its fallout.

The research done in Bowman and Larson and Peters was supplemented by articles written by Davis and Brattberg. Homeland security’s response to terrorism can be considered a process that is intended to make the nation and potentially the world a better and safer place with an overall assessment of how to find ways to further strengthen the capacity of the US homeland security system. It is the goal of all agencies involved in homeland security, including the military in certain cases, to make the citizens of our nation feel safer.

Interestingly, when Beresford breaks the concept of homeland security down in her own article, one of the definitions of the phrase she comes up with – “Homeland Defense” -“refers only to actions taken to deter or defend against attack. It does not include dealing with the consequences of an attack, or the attribution and response required to restore deterrence” which is an unusual stance to take in an article about terrorism. This will come back at the end of the research when we address the few sources which were against the inclusion of the military in homeland security efforts. Beresford goes on to state that “a distinction was made, most notably by the military, between the terms ‘homeland defense’ and ‘homeland security’.” This seems to suggest that the military distinguishes between international and national defense efforts, which we can contrast with the research in earlier articles, among them Bowman and Brattberg.

Larson and Peters draw all of the above definitions of homeland security together and show that not only is the army perfectly willing to help in homeland security (even in completely natural disasters), they are also very well equipped to do so, since the army trains its members as first responders and so on. This does beg the question why does Beresford in particular state that the military will not be able to help deal with the consequences of any disasters; but she and others do clarify their position in this respect by going on to state that they believe a stronger involvement of the military inside the homeland would leave them weakened outside of it.

This view of homeland security is extremely one-sided, however, since security isn’t a zero-sum game, as Bellavita points out. Not all of his seven different ideas of what homeland security entails would require the same agencies to react in the same ways; the military could (and does) keep itself confined to the rule of a domestic agency when it is dealing with a domestic problem and only comes to the fore in a purely militaristic environment. Then again, even if you think that the military should be involved in all aspects of homeland security, it may not help the public, according to Melia. Acts of terror, as the name suggests, are criminal acts deliberately carried out in order to create fear in people and an increased military presence has the potential to add to the climate of fear since military personnel are not exactly trained to look nice and approachable.

For the brief section on criminal law as it pertains to terrorism, we used the article “Terrorism and Criminal Law” by Melia. Melia’s basic thesis is that the changes in the legal system that were made to combat terrorism by applying stricter punishments to it have the adverse effect of creating what he calls “enemy criminal law,” where the legal system turns into a case of opposing laws appearing on the books – one set for citizens, and one set for non-citizens (i.e. terrorists). As he puts it, “there is no doubt that terrorist crimes deserve harsh punishment, since the harms usually brought about when such offenses are consummated is significant.” But having two separate avenues of punishment might not have the ultimate goal of making people feel safer, since, as Melia points out, a well-known outcome of such law is the prison Guantanamo Bay; the idea that certain actions may lead people to such a place, as well as the idea that more changes to the law may be forthcoming would possibly lead to widespread fear among the population since people will wonder where the new laws are going to end.

Function of Increased Localisation in Terms of Homeland Security

The localization of the agencies which look after homeland security is an issue that has been raised repeatedly since the 2001 terrorist attacks. This research was split into two distinct sides: those writers who were for increased localization, and those who were against it. This section will examine both sides of the issue as it is used to describe potential effects on communities as well as on homeland security.

To start our research on this topic, we looked at Bhaskar, Kapoor, et al. to provide a backbone for us to work from, taking their list of the duties undertaken by various agencies in the name of homeland security. Two authors in particular whose articles were used to illustrate the arguments for the inclusion of local agencies such as the police are Fieldmann and Oliver, who both argue that the police are in a position to do a lot of good for the greater homeland security effort. Fieldmann, in particular, is highly in favor of the use of localized agencies in homeland security, saying that the skillset held by police – problem-solving and information gathering, among other things - is exactly what is needed for homeland security; he believes that having the police as part of the effort can only benefit the security effort. The homeland security effort relies greatly on information collection, and the police, with their connections to the community, are in a perfect position to gather that information. Oliver backs this up in his article, writing “a critical element to any Homeland Security program is the local police and sheriff's departments” and saying that the only problem police departments have suffered from is that their role in national security has always suffered from poor communication and as a result has often been overlooked.

A few authors have, in their own articles, take the entirely opposite stance that involving the police and other localized agencies in homeland security would be and is a mistake. We focused on three primary sources for this section, O’Hanlon (which is where the bulk of our research was based on) Rittberger and Chappell. Rittberger and Chappell both make the interesting and completely valid point that having police become more involved in homeland security as a whole rather than focusing on the communities they are situated in to serve will only detract from public safety as a whole since they will have less time for actual police work in the face of the new homeland security workload. O’Hanlon goes into more detail, citing an enormous cost load if all emergency responders were to be equipped with what was necessary for them to be able to avert a terrorist attack, as well as agreeing with Rittberger and Chappell that community police officers should perhaps focus more on their immediate communities than on what the information available in that community can offer to the cause of homeland security.

Role of Technology in Homeland Security

The research done for this section included two separate lines of inquiry: The TSA x-ray scanners and the use of biometric scanners; technology that could be used either by the TSA or by a member of the public (for our examples, we used cameras and social networking). We look at an overview of the advancements in technology: the increasing number of phones that have cameras and internet access; the various techniques that can be used in security sweeps and discuss the possible implications of all of them.

The x-ray backscatter machines are discussed from two different angles, using an article from ProPublica to discuss the dangers of them, and using Kuruvilla’s report on the removal of the machines from airports to discuss the potential privacy issues involved. From these, we discuss potential issues of homeland security as it pertains to individual security – debating the issue of whether it is right or not to cause a few people to feel less secure in the name of security for the majority.

We also discuss biometric scanning in this section – using scans of fingerprint and irises to determine identity. The research appears to indicate that this technology will be the future of security since even though it is based on outdated theories (phrenology was popular during Victorian times), the data itself is not stored in any way that it could be easily replicated, since the relevant data is stored as numbers rather than photos, and relies on information that is unique to each person.

A small discussion of the use of cameras and surveillance footage is introduced here, with research on camera footage and the use of specific programming. The programming of such devices – in ways that could detect purposeful loitering and so on – is discussed as well, with reference to the fact the use of these cameras and programs have met with great success in other countries.

The main disadvantages of advancing technology are that it now means that every phone is potentially a security breach. Most phones now have a camera and the capacity to connect to the internet with, as the case of Amanda Seyfried shows, the potential to undermine security. While the fact that TSA is online shows that the agency is keeping up with the times, with her internet access Seyfried not only showed the world that TSA was fallible (which in and of itself is no bad thing, since no one is infallible), but it also showed that social networking sites have great potential to undermine public security and by extension homeland security. Again, the literature suggests that further research is needed to improve our understanding of the potential for damage or otherwise to homeland security.

Role of Population Movement in Homeland Security

This section relied mainly on the GAPMINDER world health chart (see images four and five) for the data involved. Our research showed that people were living longer lives on average and that the country was enjoying economic growth. This research was coupled with the research into Chris Walker we did which showcased population movement on a bigger scale than before, showing that homeland security now has a greater need to provide secure travel arrangements, as well as a greater need to keeps tabs on movements.

Our research showed that over seven million people moved around the country in 2012, moving across state lines to settle down and begin a new life. While it is true that many people moved from a more expensive state to a less expensive one, that does not mean that they have become less affluent; while they may be looking for a cheaper state to live in, they still fit into the growing economy, since moving is an expensive process. Other data suggests that most of the people moving from New York to Florida are retirees, who appear to be exploiting both their longer life spans and their economic stability in moving from one expensive state to the other.

Arguments Against the Inclusion of the Military in Homeland Security

In addition to that, we explored some of the research, primarily written by Brooks and Beresford, which was against the inclusion of the military in homeland security. Involving the army in homeland security would possibly represent the ultimate inclusion of centralized authority in homeland security in its history, which would be an irony considering the arguments for decentralizing the duties of homeland security and enlisting the help of the responders in the community such as the police. Brooks points out, in a call-back to the alternative meanings of security, that the entire premise behind the military is that it is an entirely non-political entity. Homeland security is a political endeavor, so involving the army could be seen as counter-productive.

Beresford, with some help from O’Conner, appears to take a more pragmatic approach, pointing out that a huge military training program brought on accusations of the Department of Defense trying to apply for more grant money for the government - effectively raising questions over ethics and power. Another problem she points out is that the military would be asked to cultivate attitudes that were more police-like in nature when the two agencies operate on completely different levels which have been shown to be incompatible with each other.

III. MAIN - Reviewing the Term “Homeland Security”

Research shows that while homeland security is a term that most Americans have only recently become familiar with, it has been used as an official term since at least the mid-nineties and has been in the federal consciousness since at least the 1940s. As we move further into the 21st century, the role of homeland security in the country is changing, partly due to events happening in the world and at home (such as 9\11) which made the term more familiar to Americans, but also due to technological advances and population changes. The advent of new technology such as body scanners has revolutionized the way we handle security in airports; increased levels of population movement have changed the way in which homeland security is handled; how the different entities involved in security interact with each other, and who exactly is involved when it comes to the security of the nation.

One still hears the question asked, “What is homeland security?” Is it a program, an objective, a discipline, an agency, an administrative activity, another word for emergency management? Is it about terrorism? All hazards? Something completely different?

Homeland security itself is a concept that is open to interpretation: what exactly is it? According to Bellavita, homeland security is what the Department of Homeland Security, supported by other federal agencies, does in order to prevent terrorism. This is a view backed up by Smith, though both articles do both have different and fuller explanations of what constitutes homeland security beyond that.

In other views of homeland security, while the military would be of primary support during a terrorist attack, they could also be of use for the same reasons during a general emergency:

Some advocates of the all hazards view of homeland security maintain that terrorism fits appropriately within the conceptual frames of emergency management. This argument suggests that preparing to respond – or responding – to a chemical incident, for example, will be roughly the same if the incident is accidental or intentional. The argument assumes that while terrorism may be somewhat different from other emergencies, it may not be that much different.

On closer inspection, it is true that for most disasters, whether natural or manmade, the results and reactions of the various government agencies involved in homeland security would be the same: evacuate the area and treat the casualties of the disaster; protect the people and infrastructure involved as much as possible and then take steps to see if the nation can be protected more effectively in any similar events in the future. This makes it all the stranger when reading Beresford’s contention that the military will not\should not be involved in dealing with the aftermath of a disaster. Steve Bowman, who wrote a report to congress on the Department of Defense’s role in homeland security, apparently agrees when he says that increased terrorist threats mean that the Department of Defense should be more closely involved “with federal, state and local agencies in their homeland security activities.”

Homeland Security Response to Terrorism

9\11 changed everything in terms of homeland security; since then, the military has been taking more of an active role than ever before, using such measures as an increased security presence at important points in the infrastructure and having the Air National Guard fly “over 42,000 air patrol missions over U.S. cities since September 11.” This is probably what Bellavita means when he talks about national security since the security of a nation will ostensibly involve events which take place outside of the borders of that nation, and also why Bellavita first puts forward the thesis that “at its core, homeland security is about preventing terrorism and responding appropriately when we are attacked.” The military is the arm of the government to possess the ready manpower and training needed to protect the infrastructure, so it is inevitable that they would be involved in anti-terrorism efforts.

Throughout its history, the Army has been involved in homeland security. In other eras, the Army defended the nation’s coasts and frontiers, for example, and whenever needed, it has supported civilian authorities in responding to disasters, civil disturbances and other national emergencies. As the nation’s servant, the Army will continue to provide for the nation’s defense, both at home and abroad, and the reemergence of homeland security as a serious mission find the Army well-prepared to provide many of the needed capabilities.

Though this view of the military may run into difficulty when the term homeland security is broken down – Beresford describes “Homeland Defense” and “Civil Support” as two different types of situations where the military will be involved in homeland security, but will not, at least in the case of Homeland Defense, “include dealing with the consequences of attack, or the attribution and response required to restore deterrence,” which does seem a little one-sided. The military gives life-saving and disaster response training as well as strictly military training, so it seems a waste of manpower to keep them from helping in the immediate aftermath of an attack. On the other hand, the military themselves seem to be working from an entirely different definition of homeland security, one which specifically states that they will “manag[e] the consequences of attacks on American soil” as well as working on preparing for them and fighting threats when they present themselves. Larson and Peters further break down their approach to homeland security by clearly delineating the times when the army would be in command and the times when the opposite would be the case.

In three of the task areas, (domestic preparedness, continuity of government, and border and coastal defense) the Army is in a supporting role to civil authorities. In domestic preparedness, for example, federal Army participation will take place when the Federal Bureau of Investigations (the lead federal agency for domestic crisis management operations) or Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (the lead federal agency for consequence management) requests the Department of Defense to provide military forces and capabilities to assist.

In domestic preparedness, the Army appears to have the leading military role, based on its deep involvement in all aspects of the task area, including nonproliferation and counterproliferation activities; preparedness activities, such as training first responders; and support to consequence management. The army is clearly willing and able to help in all aspects of an emergency, according to the writers of this article. The aftermath of a disaster (with all the problems and issues that entails) would surely be a good time for the military to lend a hand, but apparently, the military only exists to combat actively military threats. Civil Support is military support to civilian law enforcement and emergency efforts that are unrelated to foreign attack, such as “natural and manmade domestic emergencies [and] civil disturbances”

There is a further problem in relying on the military for protection in that, as US interests outside the homeland expand, both in terms of military training and deployment, the likelihood that they will effectively be able to defend the homeland while being so stretched diminishes. This viewpoint allows for a wide view of what homeland security really is all about – it is about protecting the nation, the people in it and the interests of the nation – and while all the government agencies involved in homeland security may not have a place in all the interpretations of homeland security, they will probably have an involvement in one or two of them.

Homeland security cannot really be seen as a number of separate problems being dealt with by separate agencies or groups of agencies. It should be seen as using a holistic approach, using all seven of Bellavita’s definitions in the description of what it covers.

A pragmatic view of truth can be represented by something a fire chief told me. “There are lots of definitions, and they will be activated at different times and we each have different roles to play in different scenarios.” A productive research task would be to identify the different times, the different roles, and the different scenarios that trigger the variety of definitions.

It isn’t an all or nothing proposition – national security can and does encompass many different areas, including international terrorism as well as domestic threats and disasters. The military is a useful body to have working with you to resolve any situation which requires either a military response or their combat training\teamwork abilities, but in a domestic disaster, the response is perhaps better kept to government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, especially since terrorism is by its very nature an alarmist subject. According to Melia, the tension between involving the military in homeland security or not is not helped by what look like increasingly strict laws laid down to try and prevent threats.

There is no doubt that terrorist crimes deserve harsh punishment, since the harms usually brought about when such offenses are consummated is significant. It is also sensible to believe that the criminal law’s response to crimes of terrorism should be different than its reaction to common crimes, but from my point of view—and this is the common opinion of criminal theorists trained in the civil law tradition—the criminal law’s current response to terrorism in the Western world is grossly disproportional to the kind of harm that is threatened by terrorist offenses, even if one takes into account the differences between terrorist crimes and common offenses.

The strict laws may have the effect of combining with the actual acts of terrorism to create an atmosphere of fear, since people may worry that the tightening of the law might mean the loss of their social and political rights in the process since the splitting of the law into punishments that suit the crimes of citizens and punishments that suit the crimes of terrorists (i.e. non-citizens, in this view of crime and punishment) inevitably leads to the phenomenon known as ‘enemy criminal law’ , which may lead people to fear that Guantanamo Bay, which is the most well-known outcome of enemy criminal law, will become more and more of a feature of the law system. One more problem which may come up during a discussion of the criminal law system is that by classifying the difference between citizens and non-citizens, the law does not make any allowance for terrorists who are citizens of the US. Indeed, if it is the case that there is one law for citizens and one for outsiders, then domestic terrorists could use that to their advantage, which is why terrorism laws should not be classified in a different manner to the rest of the laws.

(Primary mission and Homeland Security guidelines list omitted for preview. Available via download)

The above is a fairly extensive list, but it does eloquently highlight the huge workload faced by those working in the field of homeland security, and the sheer number of agencies – both private and public - who would be involved. While homeland security has always been seen primarily as a job for the federal government, particularly since 9/11 brought terrorism so aggressively to the forefront of the American imagination, the definitions of homeland security have expanded and the need for different agencies with skillsets has been discovered preventive efforts have been quite lacking, especially outside of New York City. No police forces in the country except New York's have created more than skeletal counterterrorism units to integrate their normal police work with counter terrorism efforts. The FBI has some capacity for these types of efforts, but it is limited. The nation's larger cities also need their own dedicated counterterror teams, and the federal government should help fund the creation and operation of such units.

Larson and Peters agree with others that the army should be strategically involved in homeland security, but also say it is important for agencies at the local level such as the police to engage in information-gathering, coordination with the other state and federal agencies and protecting the local infrastructure. After all, for homeland security to be completely effective, as we have said before, people have to trust that the agencies involved know what they are doing and seeing the people on the ground in the community (i.e. the police and the local government officials) actively involved in trying to make homeland security a reality will help keep the public complacent.

The reason for homeland security being expanded to include local government and community policing as well as the usual federal agencies was that after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the US tried to deal with the aftermath using the same tactics as it had used to conduct the Cold War, but found that they didn’t work, so had to come up with another strategy, which was policing.

America's homeland defenders faced outward. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) itself was barely able to retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only aircraft that were coming from overseas. The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic arena. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to the FBI.

Community policing is, by now, an integrated part of the homeland security process – it is now being called “domestic homeland security” and it became so because the traditional avenues followed by police – “proactive policing, problem-solving, and community partnerships” – are very useful for the information gathering needed for adequate homeland security.

Individuals in the homeland security environment anticipate local police will develop new areas of investigative expertise, increase the level of surveillance on their communities, and center their operations on securing key infrastructures (Thacher, 2005). Law enforcement agencies, which are in continuous contact with known and unknown residents, are believed to be capable of generating large amounts of information related to domestic security threats.

It isn’t just Friedmann and Cannon who feel this way about the inclusion of local police into the homeland security business – the writers of the “Policing for Homeland Security” also feel that the police are instrumental not only in gathering information for the homeland security effort but also in preventing terrorist attacks on the ground itself.

(Image 1 omitted for preview. Available via download)

The Role of New Technology in Homeland Security

Advances in technology have also changed our definitions of security and homeland security has had to grow and expand to include the possibilities of cameras everywhere, of an increase in computer use, of social networking sites and so on. More sophisticated technology means that the entire idea behind ‘security’ has changed, with wands and pat-downs increasingly being replaced by x-ray technology body scanners, among other things. How do you account for the fact that every handheld device now has the potential to be a phone and the fact that just about everyone is one click away from writing about their experiences on a social networking site? What controls are in place for that, other than telling people to switch off their phones and mobile devices?

Are people right to fear the new technology used by the TSA? Both images below show us what is shown on the screen in front of the agents when people go through the full-body scanners. There has already been evidence to suggest that these machines give out harmful amounts of radiation, which has caused some of them to be removed from airports.

The TSA first started using backscatters in 2008. The technology, produced by the security system company Rapsican, detects hazardous objects by creating a detailed image based on each individual's body shape. The scanners were so powerful that officers could see through clothing and observe all of the curves on each individual's body, effectively creating a nude image.

There was also a tremendous backlash against the use of those self-same scanners because it was argued that they were a violation of privacy. Since TSA agents used a technology that created a near-nude image of whoever was in the scanner, they unintentionally created a situation where people had to be comfortable with strangers seeing them, or else face their travels restricted.

The TSA also uses another, safer kind of scanner that doesn't emit X-rays. Instead, it sends out millimeter waves like those used in cell phones. Although there has been some doubt about the long-term safety of millimeter waves, scientists have not found a mechanism for such waves to mutate genes and cause cancer.

If the TSA knew that the millimeter-wave machines were both safer and quicker, why did they use the x-rays, and why are they now in talks with another company over new x-ray machines? The x-ray machines do give us an interesting situation to discuss in terms of homeland security – if people lose faith in the agencies that govern travel and lose faith in the technology ostensibly being used to ensure their safety, I would argue that homeland security is not being served.

(Images 2, 3 & 4 omitted for preview. Available via download)

Biometric fingerprinting is another method used by the TSA as a method of identification. The machine works by taking a scan of your fingerprint and comparing it against pre-scanned images it holds in its memory. Along with iris scanning, fingerprinting makes use of the unique characteristics found in all human beings – everyone’s fingerprint is different, and everyone’s irises are different. Theoretically, it isn’t possible to duplicate someone’s fingerprint, since the scanner only stores information about the defining features of a fingerprint in a series of numbers, rather than as an actual photo, and presumably the same can be said for information on somebody’s iris. Spinella does seem slightly skeptical of the ideas behind biometrics since he says that they are based partly on phrenology, which was a popular science in Victorian times, but he does also point out that the information gained from the scans cannot “be forgotten, shared, stolen or easily hacked.” If this is the case, then biometric scanning has the potential to be the best security measure employed by the agencies in homeland security, since it uses information that is by definition unique among humans.

As well as biometric scanning, a technology that has proven to be useful in homeland security surveillance. Closed-circuit TV in sensitive areas has been a massive help in keeping tabs on potential threats since the cameras have human operators watching them and there are a variety of programs that can be used in cameras depending on what the camera is being used for. Some software developers have designed programs that help identify suspicious behavior. These programs can detect intruders, loiterers, or people moving against the flow of pedestrian traffic (for instance, walking into the exit of a secure area).

Of course, there is a downside to increased technologies – the same “gadgets and gizmos”, such as cameras, are available to the public as well. Most people now have access to both the internet and a camera now, just by virtue of having a personal phone on them, and what are the potential security risks of this? There are many, and asking people to switch their phone off only goes so far. A definite example of this security hazard was shown when Amanda Seyfried took to twitter very recently to tell the world (and TSA) that they had missed her Swiss Army Knife, which she was mistakenly carrying with her. While I don’t think Amanda Seyfried should be blamed for what happened, it does raise an interesting point about the potential effects of increased access to social networks has on homeland security. Seyfried posted a picture of her open knife along with her tweet, and while she was perfectly within her rights to do so, it inadvertently drew attention to a lapse in security. People’s faith in homeland security is based, in part, on their belief and acceptance that the agencies in question know what they are doing – this tweet will shake that belief, and thereby shake the belief in homeland security and the TSA.

(Image 5 omitted for preview. Available via download)

The Role of Population Movement in Homeland Security

As you can see from the world health charts above, even though we don’t have access to very much information the overall economy of the US and the life expectancy of its citizens have been improving steadily, leading to increased expectations of being able to move about the country and the world more freely than before, because the people in question have the money to be able to do so. But as we move further into the 21st century, the world is changing in a variety of ways, and as a result of that, the needs and deployment of homeland security are also changing. Security has had to change the way it handles certain things because the growing life expectancy and growing economy have both meant that people have wanted to travel and move around more, nationally as well as internationally.

Studies have shown that in 2012, 2.2% of the population – 7.1 million people – traveled across state lines. Even if a lot of people were shown to be moving to a cheaper area, it still shows that people can call upon greater economic resources, because moving at all is an expensive process, even without moving across state lines. The chart which documents increasing lifespan could perhaps account for the fact that “New York also shows more people leaving than arriving. The most popular destination for New Yorkers is Florida. My hunch is that these are retirees.” since Florida is a popular retiree destination. This is also another possible tie in with the economic improvement of the country overall since Florida is one of the more expensive states to live in.

Arguments Against the Inclusion of the Military in Homeland Security

In all the discussion of security in the all-encompassing sense of the word, perhaps a look at the more personal meaning of the word is needed. Security is defined as “freedom from care, anxiety or doubt; well-founded confidence” and in its own way, particularly in the atmosphere of increased fear that terrorism creates, personal security is very important.

Our sense of dread, fear and anxiety, which manifests itself most clearly in a belief that politics is failing, is driven not by logic or rationality but by phantom fears that are created by political actors (many of them largely invisible to the public) in order to make money, win votes, sell products, secure research funding, highlight issues, or gain public support. Put slightly differently, there is a political economy of fear that allows ambient insecurities concerning the changing nature of society and the availability of more (but not necessarily accurate) information to be manipulated for self-serving means.

If people don’t feel secure in their own lives, they will look to politicians to smooth things over, since the politicians are the ones who make the rules. This is the problem with the changes in criminal law referenced earlier - fear of what is happening will make people not want to trust others, and potentially not trust the authorities, which can only make the task of homeland security more difficult, since if people are not confident in their government’s ability to protect them, they are more likely to see such things as body scanners and an increased military presence around them as intrusive rather than seeing them as potentially helpful.

Brooks appears to agree that an increased military presence will not help the cause of homeland security and then goes on to point out that involving the military in homeland security, which would ironically be the ultimate in centralized authority, would fundamentally not work since the military and the agencies on the ground operate under very different rules.

The U.S. system is premised on having a military that keeps its distance from politics and focuses on its professional responsibilities. Although, as Eliot Cohen reminds us, military activity is inevitably political, for the most part United States military personnel are socialized to keep their noses out of active political debate (Cohen, 2002). Rather, politics is a civilian endeavor. The Constitution helps perpetuate this convention. Civilian control of the military is assured through the designation of the president as commander-in-chief. The Constitution also vests Congress with the right to manage the military (including deciding its organization and approving its budget). All of this is reinforced by the conventions of civilian supremacy central to American military culture. Civilians are ultimately accountable and responsible for military and security policy.

She argues that increasing the army’s presence in homeland security will strain the civil and military relationship, and it seems like it would, particularly in light of the changes to the law that bring it into the territory of enemy criminal law. Having the military become more involved in the political and legal process may draw the whole idea of homeland security too close to the idea of martial law for many people’s comfort.

The U.S. military has already assumed new responsibilities in the post September 11 era. To start, Special Forces continue to patrol Afghanistan, in search of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. The military has also accepted a series of new training missions for foreign militaries to bolster their capacity to fight terrorism. On top of this, tens of thousands of military personnel are now deployed in Iraq and will stay for an unknown duration. Iraq aside, the U.S. military must remain prepared for a potential conflict in Asia. A range of incendiary situations-from North Korea to Taiwan-make that a top priority for the foreseeable future.

(Full document and references omitted for preview. Available via download)