New Homeland Security Titles Available from the Brookings Bookstore

Recent publications include:

• Protecting What Matters: Technology, Security, and Liberty since 9/11
• Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007
• The Forgotten Homeland: A Century Foundation Task Force Report
• Fighting Terrorist Financing: Transatlantic Cooperation and International Institutions

Protecting What Matters
Technology, Security, and Liberty since 9/11
Clayton Northouse, ed. Foreword by Ramon Barquin and Jane Fishkin
Brookings Institution Press and the Computer Ethics Institute 2005
Cloth Text, 0-8157-6126-0, $46.95 
Paper Text, 0-8157-6125-2, $18.95 

Description: September 11 dramatically changed how America looks at the world, both within and outside its own borders. In addition to spurring military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist attacks led to changes in several policy areas. Many of these initiatives, such as the PATRIOT Act and the Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness program, generated serious and often rancorous debate over the most basic tenets of American government. Can the United States improve its national security without seriously weakening its cherished civil liberties? And how does the availability of enhanced technology affect that delicate balance? In Protecting What Matters, leading figures from government, public policy, and the private sector analyze the critical relationships among security, freedom, and technology in a changed nation.

The terrorists left numerous clues about their intentions—two of the hijackers even appeared on government watch lists. Could more sophisticated information technology have helped authorities thwart the hijackers, and would enhanced surveillance using the Internet help prevent future attacks? Legal, political, and ethical concerns limit surveillance and intelligence gathering. How much is too much?

The contributors to Protecting What Matters address the most critical issues surrounding the relationship of security, technology, and liberty, beginning with the historical and public-opinion parameters of the debate. They go on to analyze how the intelligence community must reconfigure itself and the role that technology can play in combating terrorism, suggesting ways in which technology can protect the homeland without threatening civil liberties. Finally, several authoritative analysts focus on the key legal issues at the intersection of liberty and security, including the proper role of technology. Senator Russ Feingold presents his objections to the PATRIOT Act, the most controversial law to emerge from this debate, while his colleague, Senator Jon Kyl, provides a spirited defense.

Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007
Michael d'Arcy, Michael O'Hanlon, Peter Orszag, Jeremy Shapiro, and James Steinberg
Brookings Institution Press 2006
Paper Text, 0-8157-6459-6, $22.95 

Description: Immediately after September 11, the Brookings Institution began a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project focused on the key policy challenge of these dangerous times—assessing and improving homeland defense. That intense effort produced Protecting the American Homeland, and it continues in this important new book.

In Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007, Brookings foreign policy experts analyze current homeland security concerns and the adequacy (or inadequacy) of current policies designed to address them. The authors present both the big picture and the smaller components of homeland security policy that make up the whole. They make specific recommendations on intelligence reform, science and technology policy and the protection of critical infrastructure within the United States. They also look ahead to consider what dangers we should anticipate and plan for, recommending policies that will work to that end.

One of the strands running through Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 is the need to “stitch the seams” in our homeland security blanket through greater integration and coordination. The authors emphasize that the U.S. federal government must work together with key partners who have been insufficiently integrated into American homeland security activities to date. These actors include foreign governments, state and local government, and the private sector, and the coordination must occur in several different areas (e.g. border protection, finance, technology, intelligence). The U.S. government should not—indeed, it cannot—do it alone. By its very nature, homeland security is a problem that defies the usual bureaucratic boundaries. Effective homeland security policy demands intense collaboration on new issues and between organizations that have not traditionally needed each other.

The Forgotten Homeland
A Century Foundation Task Force Report
Richard A. Clarke and Rand Beers, chairs
The Century Foundation Press 2006
0-87078-498-6, $15.95 

Description: The Forgotten Homeland gathers some of the leading homeland security experts to analyze the nation’s most significant vulnerabilities and to propose strategies to reduce them. The report addresses terrorist as well as nonterrorist threats and offers ideas for strengthening all aspects of our emergency response—including our ability to respond to natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

Key topics covered include protecting transportation networks, upgrading "first response" capabilities, confronting the unconventional weapons challenge, and gaining better intelligence.

Fighting Terrorist Financing
Transatlantic Cooperation and International Institutions
Anne Richard
Center for Transatlantic Relations, JHU--SAIS 2006
0-9766434-0-5, $19.95 

Description: International and European regional organizations are playing an important role in combating terrorist financing. Underneath news reports of transatlantic tensions and arguments is a significant and largely successful multilateral effort, one that forms the basis for a common international approach to the problem.

This book explains how use of common conventions, standards (e.g., the Financial Action Task Force's standards), and approaches by many different international, regional, and specialized institutions is a major step forward in the fight. Author Anne Richard recommends expanding and deepening these efforts across Europe and in neighboring regions. The book also calls for improving methods used to fight terrorist financing.