Since 9/11 the federal government has spent trillions of dollars on Homeland Security related funding; every hour, U.S. tax payers are on the hook for $6.74 million just to pay for so-called homeland security operations.
With this much money being poured into defending the homeland, it would stand to reason that we should be safer now than any other some in history; but are we really safer today than we were before 9/11?
After 9/11, the Senate voted 100 to zero to federalize airport security; they reasoned that federalizing aviation security would protect the nation from future attacks. But this week we learned that the federalization of Airport security, and the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been nothing short of a complete failure.
With an operating budget of somewhere around $7.36 billion a year, TSA has somehow managed to make airport security even worse than it was before 9/11.
During routine testing by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency found that the TSA missed 96% of fake weapons, fake bombs or contraband carried through airport security checkpoints by undercover agents.
The investigation, which took place at some of the country’s busiest airports, involved so-called “Red Teams” of undercover agents posing as passengers. These agents managed to conceal fake contraband and smuggle them through security checkpoints in 96% of their attempts.
According to the documentation, at one point, even after an agent triggered an alarm, TSA agents still failed to recognize fake explosives taped to the mock-terrorist’s back – even after patting him down.
But what about all that Data-Mining; that’s got to be keeping us safe right?
According to Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, the actual Author of the Patriot Act, the NSA data-mining program is not only unconstitutional; it has never stopped a single terrorist attack from happening.
The National Security Agency has long argued that their power allows them to spy on those outside the United States, while maintaining that private American Communications were off-limits. But, according to Sensenbrenner the NSA is going far beyond what the Patriot Act allows, and is indeed collecting information on all American Citizens.
But it goes much farther than collecting just so-called meta-data. In fact, as we reported back in 2013, the NSA has been using a program called PRISM to tap directly into the central servers of the top nine U.S. Internet companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The Program allows the NSA and the FBI to access every Americans audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and internet connection logs.
So who exactly are they spying on?
According to a report from the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee titled, “Federal Support for and involvement in State and Local Fusion Centers”, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been very busy spying on the American public.
In the aftermath of 9/11, DHS has built at least 77 Fusion Centers across the United States. According to DHS, these Fusion Centers:
“Serve as focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and private sector partners.”
“Fusion centers are owned and operated by state and local entities with support from federal partners in the form of deployed personnel, training, technical assistance, exercise support, security clearances, connectivity to federal systems, technology, and grant funding.”
Unfortunately, just like the NSA Data-mining programs, The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee found that these fusion centers have found “no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot.” The report went on to state that the only thing these fusion centers seemed to excel at was spying on the American Public.
Does “fuck no!” provide a definitive enough answer?
I believe Travis has summarized the answer quite well.
Well thanks to all their fear mongering,security has become one of the biggest industries in the world.
What a SHAM. Security, Sensation and Power are the first three levels of thinking in the Western World and they are all addictions. Even though America has always been the most Secure country in the world, Sensation covers whatever gets you off and we always had the largest variety available no matter how illegal. As for Power, it’s the most addictive of all. That kind of addiction makes the Powers That Be so scandalous. The addiction to Power is evident in the bloodlines of our Government Leaders and through DNA can be traced back through their ancestry of Kings, Dictators and Pharoahs. All the way back to ancient Sumer. The same bloodlines with much family inbreeding (incest). This is one of the reasons history repeats itself. Especially political history. That should explain how it got that way. The situation has brought up the question of why doesn’t society learn from their mistakes, instead of continuously repeating them, even some of the stupidous ones.