Homeland Security Inc.: public order, private profit

Abstract

The ‘war on terror’ has ushered in a domestic Homeland Security State – one of the fastest growing and privatised areas in US government. The author reveals the way that individuals from government are free to link to private businesses and go back to government. She argues that a decade of information collection and internal surveillance have not so much prevented terror attacks at home as alienated whole Muslim and Arab communities that are under scrutiny. And the involvement of the private sector in federal programmes now puts their human rights at risk.

The Development of US Regimes of Disappearance: The War on Terror, Mass Incarceration, and Immigrant Deportation

“…In the “War on Terror,” a less emphasized aspect of this political and military initiative concerns its privatization. In what Alimahomed (2014: 85) terms the “Homeland Security State,” both domestic and international efforts to “combat” terrorism are largely privatized and contractors are “involved at every level of the war effort abroad, including the provision of defence weaponry, water, food, logistics, security, prisoner interrogations, and even health services for returning veterans.” The very declaration of this initiative as a “war” has facilitated the development of capitalist interests. As Worrell (2012: 31) describes,… by framing terror as a ‘war’ it lends the notion that terror is concretely real and can be defeated through military and police techniques and resources and, incidentally, lends justification to the claims that we need to dedicate ever greater sums of money on military and police budgets.…”