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10 facts you should know about homeland security
Campaign promises to improve homeland security have changed little in the days before the presidential election, but the rhetoric has intensified.
President Bush has signed the latest budget for the Department of Homeland Security, raising the agency's 2005 budget by 6.6 percent to $40.7 billion. But Democratic challenger John Kerry vowed to raise the budget by $60 billion over the next 10 years, to strengthen border patrols, cargo screening at ports and other measures.
Bush has "failed in his fundamental obligation as commander in chief to make America as safe and secure as we should be," Kerry said this week. 
"Just as he has been warned about his mistakes in Iraq, George Bush has been warned time and time again about the vulnerability of our homeland security."
Bush responded in kind. "The party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy is rightly remembered for confidence and resolve in times of war and in hours of crisis," he said. "Sen. Kerry has turned his back on 'pay any price' and 'bear any burden.' And he has replaced those commitments with 'wait and see' and 'cut and run.'"
Below are 10 key facts you should know about the issue. (Click on each to find out more.)
- 1 Billions of dollars have been spent on unrelated programs in the name of counterterrorism.
Click here - 2 The United States still does not have a specific strategy to identify the worst terrorist threats.
Click here - 3 Each state is guaranteed federally funded antiterror contracts regardless of risk level.
Click here - 4 Watchdog groups say homeland security spending has less oversight than Pentagon funding.
Click here - 5 Confusion and internal politics are typical within the Department of Homeland Security.
Click here - 6 Stock prices for some companies have soared more than 1,000 percent since Sept. 11, 2001.
Click here - 7 Facial recognition and other biometric systems are the sector's hottest technologies.
Click here - 8 Companies say innovative products and ideas are getting lost in government bureaucracy.
Click here - 9 Proponents of data mining say the technology can be used to spot patterns among terrorists.
Click here - 10 At least two major federal data systems have been shut down because of privacy concerns.
Click here
- Homeland security special report
- The price of safety
- News.blog
- Our reporters go behind the scenes
By eliminating lines as quickly as possible, confusion was reduced and the chances of something or someone slipping through was also reduced.
Today, there are less security screeners managing the checkpoints, TSA has unplugged and pushed shoe screening machinery into the back corner out-of-use, and TSA accepts lines and even forecasts lines at security during peak periods.
Why? Complacency seems to be one reason and other reasons TSA expresses are a lack of funding and attrition of the screener workforce.
These are the same excuses that the administration condemned the airlines for using. Yet with every federal test of its own passenger screening checkpoints, the same weapons get through. Complacency can be deadly.
By eliminating lines as quickly as possible, confusion was reduced and the chances of something or someone slipping through was also reduced.
Today, there are less security screeners managing the checkpoints, TSA has unplugged and pushed shoe screening machinery into the back corner out-of-use, and TSA accepts lines and even forecasts lines at security during peak periods.
Why? Complacency seems to be one reason and other reasons TSA expresses are a lack of funding and attrition of the screener workforce.
These are the same excuses that the administration condemned the airlines for using. Yet with every federal test of its own passenger screening checkpoints, the same weapons get through. Complacency can be deadly.