As bloody, hate-fueled attacks rose in 2019, Homeland Security officials pledged to step up their response to domestic terrorism, funding in-depth research that would help them understand the scale of the problem.
“Accurate nationwide statistics will better position DHS to protect communities from these threats,” the department said in a strategy report.
More than two years later, that data collection has not begun, and $10 million languishes unused because of internal disputes over privacy protocols, according to researchers and an official of the Department of Homeland Security.
The research that DHS has got its liver in a quiver often involves the use of open-sources... things that anyone can legally compile. But that's upset their cowardly lawyers because clipping news articles is...bad?
Let's be clear about this, shall we? DHS is never, ever going to do anything about domestic terrorism because those acts are largely carried out by people who are a) white, b) Christian, and c) male. In other words, people who tend to vote Republican. The tell is that if those carrying out the acts uttered the words "allahu akbar", DHS would be all over them like stink on a skunk.
Republicans have, for many years, foamed at their mouths whenever there was a proposal to do anything about domestic terrorism and done their level best to block any such efforts. They are complicit. So, unless either some plotter has the good sense to drop a dime to the FBI, the DHS has been reduced to hand-wringing after a white supremacist kills a bunch of people. They'll go to the scene, mutter verbiage about "thoughts and prayers", agree that "something should be done", but they'll do what they have always done:
Not a fucking thing.
Rage is the appropriate emotion.
ReplyDeleteSince G W Bush created DHS after he ignored the warnings about Al Q-aeda and then tRump created Space Farce both of who's jobs are just to do what other departments were doing before it doesn't seem like the Republican claims of fiscal responsibility and small government are really true. Just two more layers of ways to spend money but not for any actual benefit for the people. The slogans family values and law and order seem to be just smoke and mirrors too.
ReplyDeleteThe repeated failures of DHS to track/counter domestic terrorism have been thwarted since the founding of the agency by the fact that domestic terrorism is largely inseparable from domestic right-wing politics.
ReplyDeleteThis is why the Republican party went into full howler monkey hooting and shit flinging when HDS first tried reporting on it under Sec. Napolitano, and forced the department to withdraw the report.
Facebook was successful at rewriting their engaement algorithms to prevent ISIS incitement and recruiting from spreading widely on the service, but when they applied those same algorithms to blocking right-wing terrorism, they started blocking Republican politicians, and so dropped the effort immediately.