BENS domestic intel ideas are bad

BENS report (link at bottom, how do you feel about the roster for their Practioners Panel?) from 2015 advocating consolidating US domestic intelligence…

nope 🐙 nope 🐙 nope 🐙 nope 🐙 nope 🐙 nope 🐙

Key bad idea passage followed by typical bad idea bullet points:

“There is widespread agreement that our domestic security apparatus must be improved. Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are operating without an enterprise-wide concept at the federal level. This shortcoming impedes the federal government’s ability to optimally conduct domestic intelligence activities in support of counterterrorism and related missions and to provide effective oversight of these activities. It also hinders its ability to fully support and use the 800,000 law enforcement officers at the state and local levels in the national effort.”

In English they are saying that elites in America agree we need to scare people into thinking the government should be allowed wider domestic spying and detainment powers in order to stamp out emerging threats using an “enterprise-wide concept” (lol come on guys). The “shortcomings” they claim need addressing are there because the US gov put specific checks in place to make it illegal to spy on its own citizens, something that becomes more and more grey as domestic terrorism gets hyped as a threat. But are you more likely to die in America from a toddler or terrorist? (Hint: http://www.snopes.com/toddlers-killed-americans-terrorists/) Apparently we need an enterprise-wide concept to root out this toddler menace.

What BENS Recommends:

The ensuing recommendations represent those actions that the Practitioners Panel believed offer the most immediate path for substantive improvement to the United States’ domestic counterterrorism posture, while also enhancing civil liberties protections. They include:

• Establishing integrated fusion centers located in the highest-threat areas by enhancing analytic capability and collocating selected federal intelligence components – such as from the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs), National Mission Cells, and other relevant federal national security intelligence entities – with state and local law enforcement.🤤 We also need some DATES and OLIVES. Better safe than WATCHING YOUR FAMILY BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS, YOU NAIVE FOOL!

• Increasing the mutual awareness of state and local law enforcement and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces by creating mechanisms to ensure that information about current counterterrorism investigations is shared with state and local partners in real-time, and that closed case information is likewise provided to state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) assets so that they can determine whether to pursue independent investigations;😹Yes, let’s turn every local police unit into a Joint Operations Center fighting the evils of cats in trees (probably put there by terrorists, can’t be sure, intel is unclear) and opiates. I promise none of these business leaders had anything to do with the opiate epidemic.

• Enhancing intelligence analyst capabilities and interoperability through the development and application of high-quality, standardized training for intelligence personnel at all levels of government and the application of Goldwater-Nichols style joint duty and joint training protocols; 🙈 Agreed, Barry Goldwater and The John Birch Society were spot on about domestic security issues. And Goldwater-Nichols was a brilliant piece of legislation helping us kill non-Americans more better, i mean, Panama! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwater%E2%80%93Nichols_Act

• Encouraging the service and retention of high-quality analysts through career path enhancement and incentives; 👩‍⚖️Agree. We need to make sure our serious professionals only come from a few schools of thought, or else how would we ever reach consensus and take action? Gotta take dem actions.

• Bringing greater federal focus on domestic intelligence structures and processes by assigning a Deputy-level officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to manage the programmatic aspects of the federal domestic intelligence effort, and enhancing the use of the Domestic DNI Representatives to bring strategic coordination to the myriad federal agencies operating in the field;😵🤮🤢🤡Bureaucracy will save us all! So this person (wouldn’t it be so progressive if they were trans??? #progress #breakingbarriers) would be in charge of managing DNI reps that would liaise with domestic intel operations? Sounds like some Xtreme synergy to me.

• Establishing a domestic threat framework through an annual, interagency process to assess and prioritize domestic threats and intelligence needs;👨‍💼👩‍💼 Gotta have that annual interagency glad-handing. So sorry to the staff-level pukes for the increased workload. But these PowerPoints will keep us safe, so it’s all worth it.

• Enabling better coordination and management of federal intelligence efforts by including within the definition of the Intelligence Community (IC) those federal entities that undertake domestic intelligence activities but are not now included as members of the IC; thereby enhancing strategic planning and budgeting, and affording intelligence based oversight of their activities; 😧😨😩🤯 Uhhh…more consolidated intel. That sounds like a really, really bad idea to me. And not just from a conspiracy, big-brother perspective, but like, from an operational security perspective it makes the US intel community a much easier target. Increased membership always means increased risk.

• Strengthening the intelligence culture at the FBI by (i) creating a reporting relationship, as determined by the FBI Director, for the Executive Assistant Director (EAD) of the Intelligence Branch to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with respect to intelligence priorities and community management (while preserving its direct reporting relationship to the FBI Director for operational matters); and (ii) enhancing internal recruitment, training and talent management programs for its
intelligence analysts; 😋🤩 I think the intelligence at the FBI could use some strengthening. https://www.wired.com/2011/09/fbi-islam-domination/

• Enhancing the capabilities of DHS’ Office of Intelligence & Analysis by focusing its attention on those missions unique to it, such as critical infrastructure protection; border and transportation security; aggregation of intelligence information from DHS subcomponent agencies (such as Customs and Border Patrol); and providing leadership and assistance to the integrated fusion centers and the remainder of the fusion center network, especially programs for countering violent extremism; and; 🤬🤬🤬 DHS does such a good job with our airports, why not give them purview over all our domestic travel?

• Improving Congress’ ability to provide oversight of domestic intelligence activities by having all domestic intelligence activities authorized and overseen by the Intelligence Committees, and by creating an Intelligence Appropriations Subcommittee in each chamber to appropriate funds to support those activities. 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♂️Thank god at least there will be some oversight from our Congress, which 100% does not take money from any of the people who wrote this.

These recommendations do not represent an endpoint for change nor are they a finite solution to confronting the terrorist threats to the homeland. Change must be a constant effort. As the terrorist threats continue to change and adapt, so too must our domestic counterterrorism structures. Failure to adapt will leave the United States vulnerable to terrorist threats that are increasingly difficult for our current structures and processes to manage. If enacted however, the recommendations will move the needle toward increasing the operational efficiency of our domestic counterterrorism enterprise, with proper attention to constitutional protections, at a time when federal, state, and local public safety officials are increasingly aware of the evolving threat and a new Congress provides an opportunity to legislate accordingly. 🍾🍷🍸🍹🍺🍻🥂🥃 There is no endpoint for American wars. War for everyone and war forever. Oh btw, there are young men in Afghanistan, 16 years old, who have never known a day of their life in which America was not bombing some part of their homeland.