Homeland Security

DATE=11/18/02

TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP

TITLE=HOMELAND SECURITY

NUMBER=6-12718

BYLINE=Andrew Guthrie

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Assignments

TELEPHONE=619-3335

CONTENT=

INTRO: The United States Congress is moving toward approval of a huge reorganization of the nation's domestic defenses. It is called the Homeland Security Act and it will combine many government agencies or portions of agencies involved in various aspects of law enforcement and border security into a single agency.

The House has already passed its version of the bill, and the Senate is expected to vote this week. How Democrats in Congress had been dealing with this Homeland Security bill is thought by many analysts to have played a major role in why they did so poorly in the recent congressional election. We get some thoughts on the bill and the broader issue now from _____________ in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.

TEXT: Here's an assessment from The Cincinnati [Ohio] Post.

VOICE: The Homeland Security Act that Congress is furiously trying to complete in the lame duck session includes at least two broad provisions that have gotten relatively little attention. One is mostly good, the other mostly bad. The good is the inclusion of important elements of the civil service reform language [because current rules] are badly out of date.

Far less positive are sections of the bill authorizing a vast federal database which, down the road, would have the potential to imperil the privacy of the citizenry to an unprecedented extent. The "Total Information Awareness" program would authorize continuance of efforts to establish the granddaddy, [Editors: slang for " the biggest ever" of all databases] one that could pick up on your internet excursions, on all sorts of purchases you have made, on public records about you and more.

TEXT: Part of a Cincinnati Post editorial. A program related to, but not specifically covered in, the Homeland Security measure is worrying The New York Times.

VOICE: The threat of terrorism has created a powerful appetite in Washington for sophisticated surveillance systems to identify potential terrorists. These efforts cannot be allowed, however, to undermine civil liberties. There is a program now in the research stage at the Pentagon that, if left unchecked by Congress, could do exactly that. Ostensibly designed to enhance national security, it could lead to an invasion of personal privacy on a massive scale.

The program, known as total Information Awareness aims to use the vast networking powers of the computer to "mine" huge amounts of information about people and thus help investigative agencies identify potential terrorists and anticipate terrorist activities. All the transactions of everyday life -- credit card purchases, travel and telephone records, even internet traffic like e-mail -- would be grist for the electronic mill. To civil libertarians, T-I-A with its Orwellian dossiers on each and every American, would constitute a huge invasion of privacy. Congress should shut down the program pending a thorough investigation.

TEXT: Excerpts from a New York Times editorial. Back to the Homeland Security bill and some concerns from Minnesota's Saint Paul Pioneer Press about the increasing secrecy powers of government it contains.

VOICE: As the Senate takes up the measure we urge [it] to roll back the excessive information control provisions. A government in a free society must honor reasonable openness in its conduct. This nation can be safe and free only if its leaders are accountable to an informed citizenry. The House version of the [bill] needs to be adjusted.

TEXT: Oklahoma City's Oklahoman is pleased at the speed with which the post-election Congress is moving the bill through the process, and wonders why it took so long to begin with, suggesting that Democrats were stalling it.

VOICE: A similar bill passed the House last summer, but was bottled up in the Senate because majority Democrats didn't want to give President Bush maximum flexibility to design and manage the new agency. Then came congressional midterm elections earlier this month, in which Republicans used the homeland security impasse to flail Democrats as caring more about workplace rules for union workers than protecting America. It was a devastating line of attack.

TEXT: An explanation from The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. However Indiana's Indianapolis Star is somewhat apprehensive that the current bill allows the president to make secret everything to do with national defense. "That's going too far," says The Star.

VOICE: A Homeland Security Department consolidating key agencies and personnel has merit. If Saddam Hussein's games don't stop, engagement with Iraq may be inevitable. Should a full-fledged war be waged, the country must be prepared for retaliation -- here and abroad. But just as the public should support an attack on Iraq only if it is privy to information justifying such a decision, so must the right to access and disseminate relevant information be protected. Clearly, not all information should be laid out on the table for public scrutiny. People understand that, and they're not asking for daily reports on U-S military strategy. But the bill as written is unacceptable.

TEXT: Reservations from The Indianapolis [Indiana] Star. Farther East, in the Washington D-C suburbs, USA Today, the national daily, is worried about the incredible bureaucratic merging of agencies this bill is going to force.

VOICE: If past government reshufflings -- as well as private industry mergers -- are accurate guides, the new department would face a long and difficult task in getting its act together. The danger is that its mere existence will give the public a false sense of security, even as the disparate agencies being brought under one massive umbrella struggle to coordinate their far-flung activities to deal effective with terrorist threats.

Though only 15 percent of the workers would remain based in Washington, they lack a headquarters needed to generate a sense of common mission. For the foreseeable future, most would stay in separate locations. Similar problems cropped up the last time the government reorganized to confront a new threat. At the onset of the Cold War in 1947, President Harry Truman pushed to consolidate all of the military branches in a Department of Defense. But interservice rivalries made the result unworkable. Two years later, [Mr.] Truman had to go back to Congress with a new plan. Not until 1986 did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs get the power [President] Truman envisioned, and some functions within the armed forces have never been merged as planned.

TEXT: Some editorial worries about the bureaucratic reshuffling to come, from USA Today, the national daily. And lastly more concern about that and other issues from The Sun in Baltimore.

VOICE: The basic concept is flawed. Combining 22 separate departments and agencies with nearly 200-thousand employees into one super agency is a recipe for bureaucratic chaos that will distract workers from their security duties rather than sharpen their focus. New bosses, new locations, new personnel rules, new rivalries, new turf battles. These are the issues that will most concern workers in the years just ahead. How helpful is that?

The recent squabble between the F-B-I and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, neither of which is to be included in the new department, demonstrates there is little chance that blending separate agencies to eliminate overlap and clarify control can be anything but a bloody task.

TEXT: With those misgivings from Baltimore's Sun, we conclude this editorial sampling of comment on the Homeland Security bill now working its way through congress.

NEB/ANG/RH