Re:I flew on a plane without going through security. It was ...
by ams6110 on Monday December 30, 2013 @06:59PM
(#6987988)
It was also at least partly intended to streamline coordination of all the parties involved. You had various federal organizations under Treasury, DOJ, DOD, FBI, DOT, and others that were all silos. Sounds good on paper, merge them into one overall "DHS" and poof everything runs like a Swiss watch. Of course that never happens in reality. It was just an even bigger bureaucracy that still has a bunch of internal silo organizations.
Re:I flew on a plane without going through security. It was ...
by dragonwriter on Monday December 30, 2013 @07:42PM
(#6988189)
Forming DHS was, at least notionally, about coordination. Moving airline security from private carriers to the federal government was about liability. Since it was a new internal security operation, it made sense to included it in the new internal security department. But since it wasn't a federal agency before, it wasn't really part of the coordination of existing federal agencies that motivated the creation of a new internal security department.
The transfer of existing security responsibilities from airlines to the federal government wasn't a make-work program, it was a measure to eliminate potential airline liability for future security failures.
It was about the economy, because reducing the airlines liability risk going forward was one of many steps taken to help the airline industry, but it wasn't primarily a "make-work" program.