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Comment by homosaur | Hacker News Reader

DHS honestly makes me embarrassed to be an American. We could kill the whole thing tomorrow and it would make zero difference to public safety.

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This doesn't make too much sense. DHS isn't one thing; it's many things glommed into one, including INS, CBP, FPS, TSA, APHIS, FEMA, the strategic medical stockpile, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service, among others.

I don't like the TSA any more than you do, but can we hold on to the Coast Guard?

The Coast Guard was placed there for financial gerrymandering. The idea that they are part of DHS is a horrible joke.

Same with most of what you mentioned. Bush/Obama has shoved everything in there to create a psuedo military branch so it can't be declined in the future. Disgusting actions, honestly.

USCG isn't part of TSA; they just happen to report to the same cabinet secretary. I'd guess that the boating run-in here was with CBP.

Perhaps my understanding of the USCG is underinformed then, I was under the impression that they were moved from the command of the Marines into DHS years ago. Are they simply an independent police organization then?

Yes, more or less.

Remember: DHS exists because after 9/11, politicians got a bug up their ass about how many different federal agencies there were with missions that involved interior security, and decided there should be one cabinet-level authority managing all of those functions. It was not a well-thought-out thing; it is literally a meatball of different security, law enforcement, safety, military, and even scientific agencies.

Which makes it an odd subject for directed contempt.

Makes that they did that instead of addressing the actual security issue of 9/11 which was lack of intelligence sharing between FBI/CIA/etc I guess.

Or maybe that's what the de facto merger of military and CIA is supposed to accomplish.

Intelligence sharing was indeed one of the key reasons they thought it would be smart to make the DHS meatball.

Not even close the USCG was under the Dept of Transportation not the Marines before being merged into DHS in 2002. Also, in time of war the Navy can annex the USCG.

The Coast Guard is part of DHS, not the TSA. The point is that DHS is a big organization with many parts that have long-existing structure and control systems. It's not just the yahoos looking at full body scans at airports.

That was just a mistype from looking at previous post, I'm halfway through a bottle of whiskey here after being snowed in the house all day, so be lenient.

Bush/Obama shoved everything in there because people it was a national outrage after 9/11 that we had different departments for these things. We got what we goddamned asked for. It's not Bush's fault, or Obama's fault, but your fault and my fault.

Speak for yourself. I didn't ask for that.

Why should everyone accept collective blame for decisions they didn't make or support in any way?

Because we live in a society where we've empowered the majority to make decisions like this. We reap the benefits when it turns out well, we should share the blame when it turns out poorly.

That seems like a non sequitur. There is a linguistic symmetry to your suggestion, but I don't think that is a good argument for agreeing with it. Basically, I don't see any practical value to feeling like it's my fault that a bunch of other people made a decision that affects me negatively, nor would I take credit for other people's decisions that affect me positively when I originally disagreed with them.

Well, when you build a bureaucratic monster there are all sorts of costs.

Completely unrelated agencies having to carry the ill will engendered by the ones that suck is one of those costs.

Perhaps they should have considered that.

You think CBP was sunshine and roses before it got folded into DHS?

USCG's role in the drug war is IMO fairly unconscionable as well. It's horrible that they take what would otherwise be an essentially purely good and morally unquestionable agency (saving people's lives on the water, navigation, environmental protection, defense of the coast during wartime) and turn it into one of the leading edges on the war on freedom.

This is outrageous. Its police state behavior. "Confiscating" property should require documented probably cause and something like a warrant. What if the boat was your house? What if you were living in it with a family which my parents do? What then? One agent has the power and authority to do that? Ever read the comic strip or seen the movie Judge Dread?

Confiscating boats has never required the same procedures as confiscating real property. It's a distinction literally older than the republic.

I think the term is ehm, piracy?

It isn't about public safety but about politics. Who wants to be the presiding politician when something does hit the fan right after that government security program was shelved? The politician who doesn't want to get re-elected.

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