Homeland security panel discussion
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which offers a bachelor’s degree program in homeland security that started in 2006 in Daytona Beach, is hosting a free panel discussion on homeland security Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Embry-Riddle’s Lemerand Auditorium in the Willie Miller Instructional Center.
Speakers on the panel include a federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration, an international security expert and a national reporter who covered Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, the Gulf War and unrest in Pakistan.
For more information on Tuesday’s panel discussion, call Marc Bernier at 386-226-6222.
— Deborah Circelli
DAYTONA BEACH — Threats to individuals and the country’s security are more aggressive and likely to become more prevalent, according to homeland security and terrorism professors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Their comments come in the wake of the Arizona shooting last weekend that killed six people and injured 13 others, including a U.S. congresswoman. While “eyes are focused” generally on radical groups and specifically radical Islamic fundamentalists after 9/11, Jim Ramsay, professor and coordinator of the homeland security program at Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach campus, said “domestic terrorism is a huge deal.”
He and another professor at Embry-Riddle’s Arizona campus describe domestic terrorism as engaging in a violent threat or violent behavior to create fear whether out of economic motivation or seeking political or social change.
While there is still debate about whether the Arizona shooting is terrorism, Ramsay said, “we have a lot to concern ourselves with here in America.”
He points to right-wing terrorism and domestic groups and issues with gang-related violence as well as drug cartels on the Mexican border. Many of the threats are the same as years ago, he said, but they are “more poignant and more aggressive and there’s more of them.”
Ramsay said the Internet allows “someone to reach out and touch you without ever leaving home.” The computer provides access to cyber warfare for people to hack into the government’s health care system, energy system, banks and other critical infrastructure.
People with similar “dangerous and radical viewpoints” can find each other online without ever having to meet, he said.
“There are vulnerabilities as we continue to progress in the level of technology,” Ramsay said. “The Internet’s ability to network socially and join up people with similar belief patterns has allowed radical groups to propagate.”
With regard to the Arizona shooting, Ramsay said there is open access to weapons in America as well as chemicals similar to ones used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But he warns against incidents like Arizona shutting down “how we run life” and prompting politicians not to speak in public.
He said it’s difficult to identify and shut down such violent behavior ahead of time. He discussed the shooting this week in his classes.
Embry-Riddle’s homeland security bachelor’s degree program started in Daytona Beach in 2006 and has graduated 40 students. Currently, about 200 students in the local program go into fields such as homeland security, aviation security, emergency management and law enforcement.
Fellow professor Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security studies at Embry-Riddle’s Prescott campus in Arizona, teaches a profiling course.
On the first day of classes after the shooting, he held up four pictures of Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner, 22, to show that anticipating behavior is difficult as people change over time.
Bloom said it is “extremely difficult to predict violent behavior.” He said the vast majority of threats against U.S. senators, congressmen and women, state senators and local officials don’t lead to violence.
“The problem is figuring out which ones lead to violent behavior,” he said.
Bloom, who has testified in court on such issues, said certain people might pose more of a significant threat — such as someone with schizophrenia — who have had many failures in life personally, socially and professionally and have fantasies of engaging in violent behavior against people in authority.
But he said he told his class there is no standard checklist because every case and individual is different. Each expert has slightly different lists that are constantly being revised.
With advances in technology and access to weapons, Bloom said, it is easier for people to “engage in terrorism than in the past. ” He said people need to be careful with the word “terrorism” because when someone kills a person because they don’t like them, it’s not terrorism.
Whatever the terminology, “this isn’t the last time this kind of thing is going to happen,” he said. “When you look at history, there’s been terrorism ever since there’s been people, unfortunately.”
The good news, he said, is law enforcement and national security experts are more sophisticated in identifying people and thwarting such events before they happen.
Article source: http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2011/01/16/erau-profs-domestic-threats-serious.html
Category: Government Security Watch