Master's Theses in Homeland Security
This is a list of master’s theses from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security, this year.
Some interesting stuff in there.
Comments
Imperfect Citizen • October 1, 2010 7:50 AM
You are right again Bruce.
This list of these theses will help you to discern what is going on in the domestic terror game in the US. Remember Bamford’s last book concerning the role of contractors and his worries about that?
This list gives you hints about it. Read the links that the state police fusion centers list on their websites. You’ll get a picture too.
operator • October 1, 2010 8:45 AM
@BF Skinner I suspect that paper will discuss, at least in part, FDNY’s organizational culpability for several hundred deaths on 9/11. Even with an eight-year head start after the 1993 warning shot, they made practically zero progress in devising a response to a potential attack on the WTC.
TheKingIsInTheAltogether • October 1, 2010 10:02 AM
@Operator: aside from the fact that local authorities were completely marginalized in favor of federal ones, who in turn did such a craptastic job of “investigation” that the head of the 9/11 Commission is on record saying it was “set up to fail”, and NIST failed to test for explosives, there’s the other fact that FDNY was also having a lot of problems with their radios. This might as well be like issuing soldiers flawed body armor and sending them into combat.
A new investigation would certainly reveal where the failures and blame really are for what happened on 9/11/01. Google “Neil Bush” and “Securacom”.
TheKingIsInTheAltogether • October 1, 2010 10:08 AM
Sorry, that should be Marvin Bush. Neil, like the rest of his family, was involved in other shady dealings.
BF Skinner • October 1, 2010 10:21 AM
@operator ” FDNY’s organizational culpability”
Thanks. that makes more sense. I was going down the road of US Forestry’s fire service and/or organizational daily fire fighting reactionary mentalities.
Check out number four on the list, does that seem like blackwater and the mercenaries are now called NGO’s. as in nonaccountable government organizations.
The central theme of all of the papers seems to be control of a population that you do not identify with. like katrina, some sheeple will be in formaldahyde boxes and the problems will be the more intelligent of the individualists, as the less intelligent ones will go emotional and get dealt with jailed or killed early in the crisis. Just as MBA’s with their training to look at just this quarters performance got us where we are today economically, these securicrats have a narrow totalitarian point of view.
Tim • October 1, 2010 10:56 AM
@ theking… re googling “Neil Bush and Securacom”, could you be more specific with a recommendation for reliable reading on the subject? Google comes up with a zillion things, many of which seem to be scare-type conspiracy sites that don’t tend to provide very balanced coverage. Thanks
mcb • October 1, 2010 11:37 AM
No.12 interests me.
“Can Local Police And Sheriff Departments Provide A Higher Rate Of Homeland Security Coordination And Collaboration Through Consolidation Of Police Services?”
I’d rather see DHS act more like Police Department and Sheriff’s Offices (systems that have worked quite nicely for 200 and 500 years, respectively) rather than centralize them to act more like the Federales. But we should wait to read the actual papers before getting too rev’ed up about the titles.
Robert Brewer • October 1, 2010 11:43 AM
I can’t figure out if the prolific commenter there is a genius, a spammer, a lunatic, or talking in code. It’s certainly not auto-generated (or if it is, it’s a large but homogeneous corpus).
Petréa Mitchell • October 1, 2010 12:09 PM
The implication that subject #10 is an area in which research is needed and valuable worries me.
Leprechaun • October 1, 2010 12:42 PM
@#4
NGO usually means Non-Governmental Organizations (eg, Red Cross, Amnesty International, Center for Economic and Policy Research). They can be just about anything, as long as they are not run by a government (even if they are funded by one).
Fire service — Knowing a couple of folks in the FDNY (firemen, not managers; these folks still breath smoke and get wet) there is a serious issue in that these folks rush to run into situations that put themselves at significant risk. More that 10% of the people who died in NYC on 9/11 were firemen who weren’t in the building at the time of the initial attacks (343 out of less than 3,000 – not sure of current count). Regardless of whether that is good or bad, it does have a security impact.
TheKingIsInTheAltogether • October 1, 2010 1:40 PM
@Tim, in my opinion the single most balanced and rational site out there when analyzing the 9/11 attacks is Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Nothing wild eyed and crazy about this bunch – these are scientists, and there are over a thousand of them now calling for a new investigation which involves a lot less partisan politicking and a lot more scientific method.
Davi Ottenheimer • October 1, 2010 4:58 PM
No nominations for the ig Nobel? Clearly we aren’t trying hard enough.
computer security • October 3, 2010 9:59 PM
My personal favorite: “Filling The Gap Between NIMS And The Initial Law Enforcement Response In The Age Of The Urban Jihad.”
they got me at “Age of the urban jihad” sound like a subtitle of a Clancy novel. lol
MailDeadDrop • October 4, 2010 11:54 AM
Item #14 “Medicine For The Masses: Strategies To Minimize The Consequences Of A Terrorist Attack During Mass Gatherings” seems like poorly-spent effort. As far as I am aware, there have been precisely zero terrorist attacks during mass gatherings, here or abroad. There have been multiple terrorist attacks on people just going about their daily lives. I suspect that timing is intentional on the part of the instigators, which itself might be an interesting thing to study. Conversely, there have been non-terror casualties at mass gatherings (hailstorms at festivals, tramplings at store openings, fires at music concerts). Perhaps the authors should study how to provide medical care for those real situations instead of for fairytale situations.
John Hardin • October 4, 2010 2:41 PM
@MailDeadDrop: Do you not consider a crowded marketplace or a large group of hopeful recruits outside a police station to be a “mass gathering”? What’s the lower bound?
Steve • October 4, 2010 6:06 PM
I worked at NPS. These aren’t theses. They’re book reports.
sanjana • October 6, 2010 1:20 AM
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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.
BF Skinner • October 1, 2010 7:30 AM
“1.The Significance Of The Fire Service Culture As An Impediment To Effective Leadership In The Homeland Security Environment”
Tell us how you really feel!
I’d like to read this one. Just to find out what the student means by fire service.
Organizational culture is a problem (element?) for security.