Efforts by the Department of Homeland Security to assert itself as a viable member of the U.S. intelligence community have yielded a new strategic plan for homeland security intelligence and a management directive organizing the Department’s intelligence activity.
The new strategic plan is a handsome document, but largely devoid of significant content.
See “DHS Intelligence Enterprise Strategic Plan,” January 2006 (3.3 MB PDF file).
And see “Intelligence Integration and Management,” DHS Management Directive 8110, January 30, 2006.
Relatedly, “DHS Has Not Implemented an Information Security Program for Its Intelligence Systems,” according to the title of a new DHS Inspector General report (flagged by BeSpacific.com).
The potential implication of these evidence gaps becomes more consequential when you look at how institutions actually make decisions day to day.
Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.
America’s affordability problem is bigger than home prices and rents. The best housing policies make it easier to build homes, and recognize how housing connects to other domains.