Homeland Security Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Homeland Security - Essay Example This department is a single, unified, and integrated cabinet-level agency tasked with no other job than just to protect American citizens from air, land, sea, and even cyberspace attacks. The vulnerabilities of the American national security system have hopefully been addressed but no one can say for sure it will be able to prevent future attempts from determined terrorists who obviously will always try to find ways to carry out their attacks successfully at chosen targets. In this paper will be discussed the laws creating the DHS and their operationalization to strategy. The law that served as basis for Department of Homeland Security is the USA Patriot Act (2001), a bill passed by the Congress of the United States of America and was signed into law on October 26, 2001 by former President George W. Bush that took effect on February 01, 2002. This act is actually an acronym, which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) while Patriot stands for Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. This law has many pertinent provisions designed to fight terrorism of all kinds. The USA Patriot Act provides among other things, the provisions of surveillance and in detection techniques already in use against organized criminal organizations and drug trafficking to be employed in an expanded list of crimes primarily that of domestic or international terrorism such as allowing federal agents to discreetly follow and monitor expert terrorists trained in an art of evasion against detection, conduct silent investigations without tipping off these terrorists, and authority to ask for sensitive financial records and documents through proper court order such as purchase orders in hardware store, fertilizer or chemical outlets, and banks for money laundering. The Patriot Act likewise improved information sharing among various agencies so these can better able â€Å"to connect the dots† in intelligence gathering efforts, it updated