Engagement Works

From the beginning, our Department has invested a great deal in community outreach, particularly with regard to racial, religious and ethnic minority communities. We are more effective when we explain our policies to people, when we listen to their feedback, and when we ask community groups to roll up their sleeves to work with us on projects to secure our country.

I am pleased to announce that we have taken another step forward in reaching out to the American public by creating a webpage on community outreach. This page includes recent news of interest; links on immigration information, filing complaints on travel or civil liberties concerns, and training resources that build cultural competency; and, video of Secretary Chertoff speaking about the importance of community outreach and the proactive role that American Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities can play in our national security.

After almost six years of working with racial, religious and ethnic minority communities around the country, we can say with certainty that outreach pays concrete dividends.

For example, organizations representing Jewish and Sikh communities have helped us improve our ability to screen religious travelers. The Sikh community has partnered with our office and the Federal Protective Service to develop training posters on how security guards should screen people who wear or carry certain religious items. We also co-sponsored an excellent seminar on violent extremism with the Anti-Defamation League.

When Hurricanes Gustav and Ike hit the Gulf Coast earlier this fall, we worked with our colleagues from immigration groups to ensure that evacuation materials were translated and messages were spread within communities. We are convinced that lives were saved.

Our relationships with disability rights organizations have helped us attract accomplished new employees. These organizations have also supplied subject-matter experts to help us analyze the emergency operations plans of a dozen major cities. This groundbreaking analysis was a key component of the Department’s Nationwide Plan Review, which set the agenda for improving emergency management post-Katrina.

We have also invested a great deal in outreach to American Arab and Muslim communities. We have regular roundtables with government officials and community leaders in Washington, Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. Our senior leaders have briefed groups when a new policy is announced, such as recently when Kip Hawley briefed the community groups on Secure Flight—an initiative that will decrease watchlist misidentifications. Secretary Chertoff has personally invested a great deal in this effort – speaking to the South Asian Chamber of Commerce in Houston, meeting with inter-faith religious leaders at a mosque, discussing issues with Pakistani-American doctors, and holding roundtables with students from these communities.

After almost six years of this engagement, we have tangible evidence that engagement between the Department and these communities is effective. Consider the following

• Earlier this year, we held a call with a number of community leaders to talk about the imminent release of a European film critical of Islam. As a result, several prominent Muslim leaders in this country wrote and spoke to their communities about the appropriate response to a film of this sort. Their work decreased tensions among Muslim communities and helped to prevent a repeat of the Danish cartoons controversy.
• At our Houston roundtable, an FBI colleague made a presentation about the threat of extremism among young people. The participants understood the message and wanted to address the concern locally and proactively. They organized a program for the imams of 11 of the largest mosques in Houston to all speak out against extremism on a single Friday, and then developed an anti-extremism curriculum that was taught in the mosques in subsequent weeks.
• After Katrina hit, disability advocates filled several trucks with medical equipment and supplies. However, they did not have enough money to pay for the trucks to drive across country to the Gulf Coast. When a Muslim civil rights organization heard about the situation, it raised the money within 24 hours, and the trucks were on their way.
• Community leaders have offered to encourage the youth in their communities to put aside skepticism and seek employment with the federal government. As a result, we were able to create the National Security Internship, a partnership between the FBI and DHS that brought almost two dozen Arabic speakers into our intelligence divisions. Next summer’s class will be even larger, and will expand to bring Arabic speakers into TSA and ICE.

The bottom line is this: community outreach educates our citizens; conversely, it educates us. We know from experience that community outreach builds support for the homeland security mission and it makes the people who carry out that mission more effective.

Daniel W. Sutherland
Office of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties

Why the Country Needs the National Applications Office

It is unfortunate that recent articles and blog postings have chosen to spend so much time complaining about the past instead of the critical and substantive benefits the National Applications Office (NAO) will provide the American people in the future. We need to move forward, get the NAO fully operational, and demonstrate how this 21st century capability will greatly aid the work of our scientists, our nation’s first responders, and others charged with protecting the United States.

The NAO will act as a clearinghouse for available technologies such as overhead imagery to better serve the scientific, homeland security and, eventually, law enforcement communities, with a solid framework to protect privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. It is a good-government solution to assist those users, and there is nothing secretive or mysterious about its mission. In fact, the scientific work of the NAO has been done for more than 30 years by the Civil Applications Committee (CAC), which itself will become part of the NAO. But the CAC model is 30 years old, and the world we live in is far different and, in many ways, more complex than when the CAC was first formed.

In 2005, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Geological Survey, which chairs the CAC, chartered a blue-ribbon commission to review how the CAC facilitated, managed and oversaw capabilities and resources of the Intelligence Community for appropriate domestic applications. The commission concluded that there is “an urgent need for action because opportunities to better protect the nation are being missed.” It recommended the creation of an entity “to provide a focal point and act as a facilitator to [overhead imagery and other resources] on behalf of civil, homeland security and law enforcement users.” The Commission’s report is available in its entirety to the public. This was quite a public birth of the NAO.

The NAO will provide an excellent tool to help keep all Americans secure. Examples of how NAO will use overhead imagery for appropriate domestic purposes include:

• Saving lives through support to forest firefighters, as we saw with the wild fires in California last year and again this year
• Preparing for National Special Security Events such as this year’s political party conventions
• Assisting preparedness, response and recovery efforts of catastrophic flooding
• Helping to secure our nation’s borders
• Supporting the U.S. Coast Guard in its search and rescue operations and oil spill response
• Assessing the readiness in advance of a natural disaster
• Assessing damage following natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and floods
• Geospatial mapping
• Preparing environmental studies relating to geologic features, forestation, studies of wildlife, and other environmental research.

NAO will facilitate access only to geospatial intelligence (e.g., overhead imagery and mapping), measurement and signature intelligence (e.g., seismic acoustic sensors used to identify seismic activity such as earthquakes and tsunamis), and electronic intelligence (e.g., using emitters to rescue ships at sea during Hurricane Katrina). NAO will not accept requests to use capabilities to intercept verbal communications, whether written or oral.

I am not sure what some commentators meant when they said the NAO lacks for champions. All they needed to do was ask a homeowner whose home was saved by the kind of overhead imagery NAO will be able to provide firefighters. Or they could have spoken to me, who has served this country as an intelligence officer for 50 years, or to my bosses, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell. The homeowner or any one of us in government service would have been happy to explain how the NAO will benefit the American people.

The Department of Homeland Security, with the assistance of a number of partner agencies, has designed the NAO with an extraordinary amount of scrutiny and oversight to ensure that the civil liberties, civil rights and privacy of Americans are protected. A National Applications Executive Council will oversee the NAO. It will be chaired by the Deputy Secretary of DHS, the Deputy Secretary of Interior, and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and aided by their policy, legal, privacy, and civil liberties and civil rights advisers.

Both the Privacy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties offices of DHS thoroughly reviewed the NAO Charter and other plans, and completed privacy and civil liberties impact assessments. In addition, DHS’ Inspector General reviewed the NAO’s privacy stewardship and issued a very favorable report. (download PDF reader)

The NAO will safeguard privacy, civil rights and civil liberties by ensuring that its procedures are in accordance with laws, policies and procedures that protect privacy, civil rights and civil liberties, including:

• The U.S. Constitution
• Executive Order 12333 and the procedures for intelligence community members under that order that have been approved by the Attorney General
• The Posse Comitatus Act
• The Privacy Act of 1974, as amended
• The E-Government Act of 2002, Section 208
• Any other applicable laws, policies or procedures that have the purpose or effect of safeguarding privacy, civil rights, or civil liberties

Because it is a part of DHS, the NAO is subject to compliance oversight by the DHS Inspector General, Chief Privacy Officer, and the Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Additional oversight will be provided by the Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Secretary Chertoff and I have fully and frequently briefed all the relevant committees of Congress, and remain committed to answering any further questions they may have. We look forward to the completion of the Government Accountability Office’s review of the Secretary’s certification that privacy and civil rights/civil liberties are addressed by NAO, so that the NAO can begin its civilian and homeland security applications.

I work every day to help keep the homeland safe. The NAO, with the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties built in as described above, is not only good government but needed now to help the nation respond and recover from all disasters – natural or man-made.

Charlie Allen
Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis

A National Fusion Center Network

The Department and states have made a lot of progress in making the State and Local Fusion Center Program -- a key provision of the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act -- a success in the last three years. Now we are committed to building on that success by supporting the implementation of a National Fusion Center Network.

What do I mean by that? Working with our colleagues in the Department of Justice, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Program Manager-Information Sharing Environment, the National Fusion Center Network strategy will connect more than 50 state and major city fusion centers and the federal government in a partnership to protect America.

I envision a community of state, local and federal intelligence and law enforcement professionals working together – supported by appropriate tools – to achieve a common goal: protection of the nation.

These men and women would leverage federal as well as state and local networks; move relevant information and intelligence quickly; and enable rapid analytic and operational judgments. That is what this National Fusion Center Network is all about.

Our ability to move, analyze and act on information is our greatest strength. We must use the network and the information in that network to push our defensive perimeter outward. That’s what the National Fusion Center Network will do for us.

We in the federal government recognize that state and local authorities have been working at this for years. We, particularly those of us in the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the rest of the National Intelligence Community, must aggressively support the states in this endeavor and become a committed partner in creating the National Fusion Center Network.

That is exactly what we are doing.

Intelligence officers equipped with exiting capabilities are helping local authorities as needed and appropriate. In addition, information once only available in cities and states can be shared with the federal government and used to protect the nation as a whole.

This is all very new and different for the Intelligence Community. We are working hard to educate ourselves on the information needs of our state, local and tribal partners, as well as increase our ability to provide them information.

And we all must do this while paying the utmost respect to the civil liberties and privacy of our citizens.

Creating this National Fusion Center Network is a challenging but achievable task. We are doing many things for the first time, and will likely make mistakes. But we will learn from those mistakes, do better, and create what the country should have had before 9/11.

Charlie Allen

Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis

Security and Freedom: Honoring our Values

Each year, more than one million individuals, including thousands of Americans, make a pilgrimage to the cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia during the Hajj. This year, we expect that these travelers will return to the United States in the next few days, in time to be home by December 19, for Eid.

Because our Department is committed to facilitating travel in ways that enhance security and preserve freedom, CBP and TSA are providing their officers the necessary information to work with travelers attending this major religious event. TSA has published guidance on the Hajj, both on its website for travelers and for its officers in the field. Similarly, CBP has issued guidance to their officers around the country.

The guidance emphasizes that persons returning from the Hajj should be screened and processed using the same standards, procedures and care that would be afforded any traveler entering the United States. Security standards are not being changed one iota. The guidance provides background and context that will greatly benefit our officers as they interact with travelers in the upcoming days.

The guidance also explains what the Hajj is. It describes practices that may be associated with those traveling for the pilgrimage, and it identifies religious articles or items that these travelers may carry. It advises that pilgrims may wear very simple white clothing; that it is common for travelers to pray in public areas such as airports; that many will travel in groups; and that travelers may carry items of religious significance, such as the Qur’an or water considered sacred from the Zamzam well. For more information, you can visit TSA’s website.

Through such guidance, we are strengthening our cultural competence and honoring our proud traditions of civil rights and civil liberties -- including religious freedom -- as we protect our homeland and our travelers. We work closely with various religious groups such as Sikh and Jewish organizations concerning the screening of people who wear religious head coverings or carry certain religious articles when they travel. Similarly, we work with Christian and secular organizations concerned about immigrants seeking asylum here.

As the department’s Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, I can attest that DHS remains strongly committed to these traditions. For the first time in the federal government, a Cabinet-level Secretary has placed two civil libertarians in senior leadership positions -- Hugo Teufel, our Chief Privacy Officer, and me. Our job is to ensure that security policies are designed in ways that preserve our constitutional and statutory rights.

While the challenge of enhancing both security and civil liberties can appear daunting, we are meeting it in two ways: by being innovative and by listening to a wide range of views from responsible people. Looking to the future, we will continue to address issues that have been debated for many years – like profiling or the use of satellite technology inside the country – with creative and practical solutions that include the public in the decision-making process. As we do so, we will honor our bedrock American values and ensure a safer and a better country for all.

Daniel W. Sutherland
Officer for Civil Rights & Civil Liberties