[rayiner]

DHS isn't an organic entity that sprung up from 0 to 230,000 in the wake of 9/11. It is just an amalgam of a bunch of agencies that already existed. It includes the Coast Guard, INS, Customs, FEMA, TSA, and Secret Service, along with a bunch of smaller agencies. Of those, the only new thing is TSA, which is 56,000 employees. And while annoying, TSA is mostly doing the same job private companies used to do under contracts with airlines.

[sfx]

That's an excellent point, though it still is relatively scary. Such as the powers the DHS has in "constitutional free zones"[1]. It makes me nervous having 230,000 people having this much power because they're under the umbrella of "DHS".

[1] http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/homeland-sec...

[twoodfin]

That's a rather loaded term to describe a tradeoff between individual rights and the government's legitimate interests. Moreover, it's a balancing that has survived Supreme Court scrutiny, IIRC.

[wiml]

It's a funny "balancing" that means that 2/3 of the population does not have the right to be secure in their persons or papers, freedom of movement, the requirement of due process, warrants, and probable cause before being handcuffed or cavity-searched, and so on.

[rayiner]

That's a huge exaggeration to the point of verging on an outright lie. See: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6933260753627774...

[wiml]

I'm not sure what assertion you're claiming is a huge exaggeration? The Federal government claims a 100-mile region in which the border-crossing exceptions to the Constitution apply. The court judgment you cite says that's BS and the government does not have that much leeway. The comment to which I was replying appears to argue that the 100-mile rule is a tradeoff/balance that has survived scrutiny.