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Review: The Myth of Homeland
Security
I just finished to read The
myth of Homeland Security. This is a good book about homeland security;
mostly concentrated on United-States homeland security post 9/11. This is an
apolitical essay on the subject. He bases his thoughts mostly on the analysis
of the PATRIOT acts and other governmental writings. A thing that I really
don’t like is that he didn’t do a bibliography; he justified this by:
“I had to write whole
sections of this book based on partial information. But this book is not
intended to be a history text or a reference. I’m making some inflammatory
observations; I don’t want you, the reader, to ignore the substance of what I
have to say by getting bogged down in the details of my research. So I didn’t
quo sources.”
This is a good introduction book on the subject
of homeland security. He ask the general questions of the subject and explain
his point of view on them. I think that this is an honest writing from the part
of the author. Some times, he lacks some deepening of his subject but this is
excusable.
There is a good quote that resumes the general mood
of the book: “Last week a friend
forwarded me one of those “quotable quotes” emails that circle endlessly on the
internet. At the bottom, it read: “You read about all these terrorists – most
of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some
for as long as 10 to 15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you are two
days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let’s put Blockbuster
in charge of immigration”.
By moment I had doubts on his researches for
this book. For example, at the page 111 he says in a You should know section: “The
National Security Agency (NSA) is a completely separate “turf” that focuses on
cryptography, communication security, and signals intelligence.” The
problem is that if you read “Body
of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold
War Through the Dawn of a New Century” you’ll see that the fall of CIA was
mainly caused by the NSA who win the bureaucratic game for founds. The FBI
probably not helped but to say that the NSA is completely separate turf this is
two worlds. It’s possible that he is right, but I put a bémol here.
There is his home page: Marcus J.
Ranum
This is my personal little review of the book,
but you can have access to a full and complete review of the book by reading Robert M. Slade’s
Have a good read! |
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