Signup for QHSR Dialogs

The DHS Blog had a brief piece yesterday about the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR). It addressed a subject that has already been covered here, the public dialog that DHS is including as an integral part of their review. What is new in this piece is that DHS is announcing the web site where we can sign-up to take part in the review. The web site is being hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration and I have a significant complaint about how they are dealing with things. First off, rather than keep things on the web site set up for this project, HomelandSecurityDialogue.org they have farmed out the hosting of documents to a separate web site Scribd.com. To view or download documents from this site you must register with Scribd.com. Now, I don’t know anything about this website or the people that run it, but this seems to be a crazy way to run a government sponsored dialogue. The one thing that really bothers me is that the privacy disclaimer on the HomelandSecurityDialogue.org web site specifically says that “Information collected through this page will only be used to contact you about this National Dialogue, and will not be shared with any third parties or government organizations, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” Having to go through Scribd.com and register there makes that claim patently false. Now I have signed up, with some reluctance to be sure, with this mishmash of web sites to that I’ll be involved in the ‘dialogue’. I cannot, however, in good conscience recommend that anyone else do so. I will report on what ever kind of problems (or possibly the lack there of) that comes from signing up with this mess. I would certainly be willing to bet that my incoming spam rate is going to go way up. Buyer be ware and proceed with caution.