Drones Over The Homeland: Mission Creep, Lack of Accountability, Boosterism, and More Coming

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17931-drones-over-the-homeland-mission-creep-lack-of-accountability-boosterism-and-more-coming

Drones Over The Homeland: Mission Creep, Lack of Accountability, Boosterism, and More Coming
TOM BARRY FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Wednesday, 24 April 2013 17:45

Immigration reform proponents in Congress advocate pumping billions of dollars of new DHS spending into a border security strategy that is already overly reliant on dysfunctional high-tech surveillance. Drones Over the Homeland [s](PDF | HTML)[/s] raises questions about the wisdom of linking immigration- reform bills to high-tech surveillance programs – as both the White House and Senate have proposed.

Drones Over the Homeland complements another CIP policy report, Fallacies of High-Tech Fixes for Border Security, which examines the history of high-tech boondoggles in border control. Both reports demonstrate how the Department of Homeland Security has lost its policy compass, lacks strategic focus and fails to even define what it means by border security. Author Tom Barry, senior policy analyst and director of the TransBorder Project, exposes how the White House and Congress poorly serve the interests of both citizens and immigrants by tying immigration reform to strengthening misguided border security campaigns.

“Fixing a broken immigration policy should not entail ‘beefing up’ a badly broken border security policy,” says Barry. “Instead, Congress and the White House should undertake a major overhaul of the flawed border security system – especially its monumentally failing high-tech operations – rather than pour more money into ineffective, unfocused and unaccountable border security programs.”

Drones Over the Homeland reveals the key role of the Defense Department in expanding the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at home.