Homeland Security~ The Pros and Cons

Good morning gentlemen and junglists.

I have a short diatribe on todays complex apparatus' of what was perfectly coined "Homeland Security" and if you are reading this I rather appreciate it.

Homeland security was originally enacted by former President Bush after 9/11, and it could be argued that it existed pre-9/11 without an official name. There have always been wiretaps. Perhaps the first form of surveillance was simply overhearing conversations or he said she said gossip. I would probably guess that basic surveillance techniques date back to the 1940's, though I would posit that it really came into fruition in the 50's and 60's.

Think of the old bug in the vase trick...

"Please speak directly into the flower vase, sir".

Clearly, however, the use of mass surveillance came about post 9/11 (at least in America). This kind of technology was generally used to monitor dissidents abroad, but "Homeland Security" sought to monitor the actions of not only potential dissidents and terrorists, but (so I have heard) also gangsters and criminals.

The use of surveillance on people within the borders of America really took off in a big way post 9/11~ and one would be wise to ask oneself why this type of maneuver would be necessary...

Whether or not creating an entire bureaucracy designed to monitor for potential terrorists was worth the money (as clearly 98.6 percent of all monitoring is deigned to fairly mundane tasks, such as listening in to pot heads) is a question fully open for debate now that we've assassinated Bin Laden, however one must understand that the majority of the funding for anti-terrorism was in full on manufacture of National Defense (i.e. Clips and Carbines), not in monitoring American Citizens.

However, one should at least admit that you are probably being monitored right now, unless you never curse, spit, or buy drugs. This creates a very real dawn of technological infringement, one which we could easily do away with... but probably will not go away in the near future...

So, let's break it down into pro's and con's.