DHS Laws and Regulations Page Update 05-26-10

Because of other duties last week I did not get a chance to report on the recent change to the DHS Counterterrorism Laws and Regulations web page. Two new sections were added to this page and some minor changes were made to some of the chemical security related entries. Politically Correct Additions The two new sections reflect two increasingly important political concerns of people in Congress and the Administration; Human Trafficking and Bioterrorism. The links provided in these sections are all old news, most of them dating back more than two years. The counterterrorism link to bioterrorism is obvious, but the link associated with Human Trafficking is more tenuous. One would assume that there are terrorist organizations that are profiting from the trade in sex slaves and child laborers. Of course, the same could be said for the drug trade, cigarette smuggling, counterfeiting and any number of other illegal activities. Are we going to see all of these moved to the DHS Counterterrorism web pages? I hope not. There is no doubt that despicable people are involved in this activity and that serious government resources need to be marshaled to prevent these activities. But, making this part of the counterterrorism effort is a reach and will inevitably detract from legitimate counterterrorism efforts. Please, move the Human Trafficking information to the DOJ site where it belongs. Minor Changes The minor changes that I mentioned in the opening paragraph are small ‘e’ editorial changes that few people would notice or care about. I wouldn’t normally bother to mention them if the previously discussed changes had not already made doing a blog posting necessary. In a number of instances in the Paperwork Reduction Act section of the page, there are references to “Notice of Action issued by OMB”. At the end of the explanation in those sections there is a link provided to that notice. Now why the link is listed that way, I don’t understand, it should (in my opinion) be linked to the words “Notice of Action”, but I’m not the editor. The change was that in the previous version of this page, the entire link was printed; now the link is attached to the words (www.Regulation.gov). That makes the editorial decision even more confusing and internally inconsistent. Yes, I understand that I’m being anal retentive, but it is not often that a writer gets a chance to point out inconsistent actions by an editor; usually it goes the other way.