border security

Setting a New Standard for Border Patrol

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COMMENTARY: Border security Chief Mike Fisher recently announced that his agency will unveil a new strategic four-year plan in the coming months. While the details are not yet finalized, the plan will attempt to take border security to the next level by trading physical security, stand-alone fusion centers and brute force for smarter technology, joint operations and intelligence to more effectively put in place a risk based approach to manage and mitigate threats at the border.

This is a significant upgrade from the original reactive strategy established shortly after September 11, which effectively deployed a vast physical network of operations centers and surveillance sensors throughout the country to identify and neutralize terrorist activity, as well as illegal drug smuggling and illegal immigration. Keep reading →

 /  Published April 19, 2012 at 2:40 PM

Ten Years After 9/11 – Three Perspectives On Homeland Security’s Mission

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Roger Cressey can recall with great precision the moment, ten years ago, when the homeland security mission came to life out of the rubble of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

“It was the magnitude and the gravity of what we were dealing with, literally when the towers were crumbling, realizing that the world had changed and that our government – our nation – had changed,” said Cressey, who served as the Deputy for Counterterrorism on the National Security Council on 9/11. Keep reading →

 /  Published September 7, 2011 at 12:15 PM

Ex DHS Secretary Says Border Can Be Secured Despite Budget Crunch

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The nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security says the border can be secured using commercially available technologies, and that the Department of Homeland Security’s failed multibillion-dollar contract with Boeing Co. to build an electronic border fence ran counter to the legislation that created the DHS in the first place.

Tom Ridge, who served in that role under President George W. Bush, recently praised the Department of Homeland Security for putting an end in January to Boeing Co.’s multibillion-dollar contract for the Secure Border Initiative (SBInet). After nearly five years and $1 billion in taxpayer funding, the deal netted a mere 28-mile prototype and a 53-mile permanent segment of electronic sensors in Arizona. According to Ridge, the effort failed in large part because it did not leverage commercially available technology. Keep reading →

 /  Published August 26, 2011 at 7:01 AM