1st Edition

Homeland Security What Is It and Where Are We Going?

By Amos N. Guiora Copyright 2012
    199 Pages 16 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    With the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 now behind us, one critical question persists. Have policies enacted to protect us from terrorist attacks actually made us safer, or have they merely mollified the concerned public with a false sense of security? Homeland Security: What Is It and Where We Are Going combines professional experiences, personal reflections, and academic scholarship to provide a realistic assessment of current policy effectiveness.

    Amos Guiora’s background makes him uniquely qualified to address this issue. He was the Judge Advocate for the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command and the legal advisor to a congressionally mandated task force charged with creating America’s homeland security strategy under the auspices of the Committee on Homeland Security.

    This volume:

    • Provides perspectives from a broad array of individuals involved in homeland security
    • Suggests ways to prioritize limited resources
    • Demonstrates the lack of universal consensus regarding the definitions of homeland security and offers insight into what should be the predominant considerations
    • Suggests solutions to a wide variety of dilemmas, including terror financing, cost-benefit analysis of homeland security, international cooperation/intelligence sharing, business continuity, and immigration/narco terrorism

    Written in an engaging manner suitable for policy makers, academics, and the general public alike, the book presents examples from the United States and Israel, offering concrete recommendations for the articulation, development, and implementation of effective homeland security strategy.

     

    What Is Homeland Security?

    Cost-Benefit Analysis

    Prioritizing Risks, Threats, and Dangers

    International Cooperation, Intelligence Gathering, and Threat Assessment

    Immigration/Narcoterrorism

    The New Face of Terrorism: Domestic Threats and Civil Liberties

    Terrorism Financing

    Business Continuity

    Conclusion—Going Forward

    Index

    Biography

    Amos Guiora is a professor of law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah and the recipient of the 2011 Faculty Scholarship Award. Incorporating innovative scenario-based instruction to address national and international security issues and challenges, he teaches criminal procedure, international law, global perspectives on counterterrorism, and religion and terrorism. Professor Guiora has published extensively in both the U.S. and Europe on issues related to national security, limits of interrogation, religion and terrorism, the limits of power and multiculturalism, and human rights. He served for 19 years in the Israel Defense Forces as lieutenant colonel (retired), and held a number of senior command positions, including commander of the IDF School of Military Law and legal advisor to the Gaza Strip.

    "This a policy book rather than a practitioner’s … chapter on business continuity is of most interest to corporate security readers. In his introduction, Guiora makes the crucial point that police and everyone involved in homeland security ‘also have day jobs.’ The answer is to make homeland security a help to that day job, not another burden."
    Professional Security Magazine

    "Guiora stresses the importance of international cooperation and intelligence gathering. While focusing on the U.S. in the main, Guiora also includes valuable reflections on Canada, Israel and the UK. This timely book, in the fields of security studies and law, would benefit both experts and scholars. It is informative, thoughtful and policy-oriented."
    —Raphael Cohen-Almagor, University of Hull, UK and author of the popular blog Israeli Politics

    "I was impressed by Guiora’s narrowness of focus on the topic while acknowledging that the subject area is quite broad."
    Security Management Magazine