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Fortress America: On the Frontlines of Homeland Security --An Inside Look at the Coming Surveillance State
Heavily armed guards at the entrances to malls and restaurants. Citizens deemed “suspicious” taken away without formal charges or legal counsel. Would a “safe” America even look like America anymore?
One of the few journalists to penetrate the new counter terror initiative, Matthew Brzezinski offers an insider’s look at the new technology, laws, tactics, and persistent vulnerabilities of the post-9/11 era. The result is this startling, sometimes controversial look at what it will take to achieve genuine homeland security and what it may be like to live inside Fortress America
Is this what a safe America will look like?
• Cameras at airport ticket counters that can tell if you are stressed
• Satellites and surveillance equipment that can see through the walls of your home
• Computer programs capable of spotting abnormal behavior
• National ID “smart” cards encoding your personal, financial, and medical information required for electronic police spot checks
In the aftermath of September 11, a massive effort has been launched to protect us from another terrorist attack. But the costs of safeguarding our country will require not only unprecedented amounts of funding, but dramatic changes in the way Americans lead their everyday lives.
Is this the new price of freedom?
• Mandatory chips installed in all cell phones and automobiles that can locate you instantly within a dozen yards
• Patriot II legislation that can arbitrarily revoke citizenship and allow terrorist sympathizers to vanish without a trace
• Transponder implants that could be injected into the bodies of prisoners, foreign nationals, and perhaps one day all US citizens…
Such high-tech measures are not the stuff of science fiction but in many cases are already being implemented. As Brzezinski discovers, similar measures have been in use for years in security states like Israel. But will Americans trade liberty for security? Will they have a choice? And can even the most radical measures insure that a 9/11 style attack won’t happen again?
From an unheeded warning six years before the WTC disaster to dramatic war-game scenarios secretly conducted at Andrews Air Force Base and chilling on-site simulations of actual attacks, Fortress America paints a sobering picture of the future of freedom…and what life may be like in a maximum security state.
From the Hardcover edition.
One of the few journalists to penetrate the new counter terror initiative, Matthew Brzezinski offers an insider’s look at the new technology, laws, tactics, and persistent vulnerabilities of the post-9/11 era. The result is this startling, sometimes controversial look at what it will take to achieve genuine homeland security and what it may be like to live inside Fortress America
Is this what a safe America will look like?
• Cameras at airport ticket counters that can tell if you are stressed
• Satellites and surveillance equipment that can see through the walls of your home
• Computer programs capable of spotting abnormal behavior
• National ID “smart” cards encoding your personal, financial, and medical information required for electronic police spot checks
In the aftermath of September 11, a massive effort has been launched to protect us from another terrorist attack. But the costs of safeguarding our country will require not only unprecedented amounts of funding, but dramatic changes in the way Americans lead their everyday lives.
Is this the new price of freedom?
• Mandatory chips installed in all cell phones and automobiles that can locate you instantly within a dozen yards
• Patriot II legislation that can arbitrarily revoke citizenship and allow terrorist sympathizers to vanish without a trace
• Transponder implants that could be injected into the bodies of prisoners, foreign nationals, and perhaps one day all US citizens…
Such high-tech measures are not the stuff of science fiction but in many cases are already being implemented. As Brzezinski discovers, similar measures have been in use for years in security states like Israel. But will Americans trade liberty for security? Will they have a choice? And can even the most radical measures insure that a 9/11 style attack won’t happen again?
From an unheeded warning six years before the WTC disaster to dramatic war-game scenarios secretly conducted at Andrews Air Force Base and chilling on-site simulations of actual attacks, Fortress America paints a sobering picture of the future of freedom…and what life may be like in a maximum security state.
From the Hardcover edition.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
272 pages, Hardcover
First published August 31, 2004
About the author
Matthew Brzezinski
5 books46 followersMatthew Brzezinski is a Polish-American writer. Matthew first worked as a journalist in Warsaw, writing for The New York Times and The Economist. He was a Wall Street Journal staff reporter in Moscow and Kiev in the late 1990s. Relocating to the US, he became a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, covering counter-terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11. His work has appeared in many other publications including The Washington Post Magazine, the LA Times, and Mother Jones.
Isaac's Army is Matthew's fourth book. His other works include Casino Moscow, Fortress America and Red Moon Rising(Winner of the Sir Arthur Clarke Award). He lives in Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts with his wife, three children, and unruly malamute.
Isaac's Army is Matthew's fourth book. His other works include Casino Moscow, Fortress America and Red Moon Rising(Winner of the Sir Arthur Clarke Award). He lives in Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts with his wife, three children, and unruly malamute.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 6, 2016
Although the author harbors strong political prejudices, try to overlook occasional eruptions and focus on what it worthwhile in the book. He looks at different aspects of security in the USA in each of ten chapters. It is interesting and eye-opening. This is not a must-read, but it is a nice to have. An index would have been nice. The major bits of info here are the emasculation of DHS aborning, the likelihood that a bio or chemical attack will have catastrophic effects on the economy, and that personal freedom is in dire peril.
He begins with the capture of terror plotters in the Philippines and the revelation of the Bojinka plot
Page xxi of introduction
“We told the Americans about plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995,” he complained to reporters. “Why didn’t they pay attention?” [The he was General Avelino Razon, one of the lead investigators in the Bojinka case]
In Chapter 1 he looks at marine security issues in Baltimore
Chapter 2 looks at airline security with a keen eye toward what has worked for El Al.
Chapter 3 – The Surveillance State – the author posits a surveillance state in 2008 and extrapolates today’s technology (and political permissiveness towards Big Brotherism) a few years ahead. This includes looks at face recognition applications, software to scan e-mails for troubling words, watch lists, the “rendering” of prisoners to places like Syria, filming of all license plates by fixed cameras, radio frequency monitoring, as is used in Singapore, using microchips on windshield stickers, the likely increase in the use of security drones flying above our borders, spying capability of orbital or suborbital craft that allows one to look into anyone’s back yard.
P 77
For me, there is only one logical explanation for the CIA’s or NSA’s sudden enthusiasm for commercial satellite providers: to upgrade the government’s domestic surveillance capabilities.
Chapter 4 - chronicles the experience of an Egyptian-born USA resident, Omar, who was within days of gaining full citizenship. He was disappeared by the feds for a considerable period, and subjected to torture. While he was ultimately released, the tale is indeed a chilling one
Chapter 5 – the Threat Matrix – Executive Decision – contains a description of a simulation conducted at an emergency session of the National security Council.
Chapter 6 – Terrorist Games: The First Responders – here he attends a first responders simulation, and learns much about the issues and shortcomings of our available services
Chapter 7 – Germs Amok: biowarriors in the ER – this is another simulation report – focused on bioweapons. There is some information here on issues relating to immunization programs
Chapter 8 – Bureaucrats of the barricades – Homeland security – its crappy housing, low priority under Bush
P 183
Fifteen prominent members of Washington’s intelligence community, including the military’s spy satellite mapping chief, Lieutenant General James R. Clapper, had turned down offers to head DHS’s downgraded intelligence analysis directorate, and one thirty-three-year CIA veteran, Paul Redmond, resigned shortly after testifying to Congress in a June 2003 hearing that his office had been able to attract only twenty-six analysts. Part of the problem, he said, was that there was not enough space for more analysts at NAC. [the physical headquarters] Also, DHS computers were not secure or able to receive classified data. Why? The Bush administration had decided, days before DHS’s formal launch, that the new agency shouldn’t have the same rank as the CIA or FBI in processing intelligence about terror threats. In ruling that DHS could neither collect its own data nor ‘routinely thrust itself into the minutiae of analyzing raw intelligence,” the White House had effectively defanged the department’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection section. Which begged the question: What exactly was that section supposed to be doing?
P 185
The truth of the matter is that homeland security is a shoestring operation, so much so that worried Democrats in Congress kept trying to throw more money at it.
P 188
Tabled as the Chemical Security Act, it sought to codify parameters for site security, ensure the safer transport of toxic materials (a single rail car filled with 33,000 gallons of chlorine could kill up to 100,000 people), and establish a timetable to shift away from the use of the most noxious chemicals. Some jurisdictions are already doing that voluntarily. In Washington, for instance, the water sewage treatment plant switched from chlorine to another slightly more expensive but less dangerous bacteria remover in 2002. The changeover cost the average Washington water consumer 75 cents, but reduced the risk of terrorist hijackings by eliminating hundreds of chlorine tankers rumbling through the capital region. [ Chemical industry lobbyists succeeded in killing the bill]
P 189
“We are not going to turn this country into a fortress,” [DHS official] Liscouski snapped. “I have every confidence that the private sector will act responsibly,” he added. “That they will do the right thing on their own.” That was quite a leap of faith, given the slew of recent corporate scandals at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and Adelphia, And it also flew in the face of reality. The Economist in its august 2003 issue, published a survey of 331 large corporations; it found that security spending had risen only 4 percent since 9/11, and much of the increase was chalked up to higher insurance premiums…”Left to themselves,” noted Steven Flynn, a homeland security scholar at the Council of Foreign Relations, “factory owners will do nothing. They have no incentive to. If factory A, say, spends a million dollars on security upgrades, its products can’t compete with factory B down the street, which spent nothing. And yet if terrorists blow up factory Z on the other side of the country, factories A and B will suffer equally, since the whole industry will go down the drain. Only legislation can level the playing field.”
Chapter 9 – The Scientific Sentinels – the focus here is on gadgets, particularly the high tech development area in DHS
Chapter 10 – Cogs in the Machine – Coast Guard and containers
Epilogue – Losing Altitude – no one has been held responsible for 9/11 failings – coordination among first responders is lacking – DHS is inadequate – the feds don’t want to tell locals anything – as 9/11 fades in memory the desire to apply to security issues wanes – the Iraq war drains potential resources
P 239
A secret White house memo leaked to the press in 2004 lists DHS among the federal agencies slated for post-election cuts.
He begins with the capture of terror plotters in the Philippines and the revelation of the Bojinka plot
Page xxi of introduction
“We told the Americans about plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995,” he complained to reporters. “Why didn’t they pay attention?” [The he was General Avelino Razon, one of the lead investigators in the Bojinka case]
In Chapter 1 he looks at marine security issues in Baltimore
Chapter 2 looks at airline security with a keen eye toward what has worked for El Al.
Chapter 3 – The Surveillance State – the author posits a surveillance state in 2008 and extrapolates today’s technology (and political permissiveness towards Big Brotherism) a few years ahead. This includes looks at face recognition applications, software to scan e-mails for troubling words, watch lists, the “rendering” of prisoners to places like Syria, filming of all license plates by fixed cameras, radio frequency monitoring, as is used in Singapore, using microchips on windshield stickers, the likely increase in the use of security drones flying above our borders, spying capability of orbital or suborbital craft that allows one to look into anyone’s back yard.
P 77
For me, there is only one logical explanation for the CIA’s or NSA’s sudden enthusiasm for commercial satellite providers: to upgrade the government’s domestic surveillance capabilities.
Chapter 4 - chronicles the experience of an Egyptian-born USA resident, Omar, who was within days of gaining full citizenship. He was disappeared by the feds for a considerable period, and subjected to torture. While he was ultimately released, the tale is indeed a chilling one
Chapter 5 – the Threat Matrix – Executive Decision – contains a description of a simulation conducted at an emergency session of the National security Council.
Chapter 6 – Terrorist Games: The First Responders – here he attends a first responders simulation, and learns much about the issues and shortcomings of our available services
Chapter 7 – Germs Amok: biowarriors in the ER – this is another simulation report – focused on bioweapons. There is some information here on issues relating to immunization programs
Chapter 8 – Bureaucrats of the barricades – Homeland security – its crappy housing, low priority under Bush
P 183
Fifteen prominent members of Washington’s intelligence community, including the military’s spy satellite mapping chief, Lieutenant General James R. Clapper, had turned down offers to head DHS’s downgraded intelligence analysis directorate, and one thirty-three-year CIA veteran, Paul Redmond, resigned shortly after testifying to Congress in a June 2003 hearing that his office had been able to attract only twenty-six analysts. Part of the problem, he said, was that there was not enough space for more analysts at NAC. [the physical headquarters] Also, DHS computers were not secure or able to receive classified data. Why? The Bush administration had decided, days before DHS’s formal launch, that the new agency shouldn’t have the same rank as the CIA or FBI in processing intelligence about terror threats. In ruling that DHS could neither collect its own data nor ‘routinely thrust itself into the minutiae of analyzing raw intelligence,” the White House had effectively defanged the department’s Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection section. Which begged the question: What exactly was that section supposed to be doing?
P 185
The truth of the matter is that homeland security is a shoestring operation, so much so that worried Democrats in Congress kept trying to throw more money at it.
P 188
Tabled as the Chemical Security Act, it sought to codify parameters for site security, ensure the safer transport of toxic materials (a single rail car filled with 33,000 gallons of chlorine could kill up to 100,000 people), and establish a timetable to shift away from the use of the most noxious chemicals. Some jurisdictions are already doing that voluntarily. In Washington, for instance, the water sewage treatment plant switched from chlorine to another slightly more expensive but less dangerous bacteria remover in 2002. The changeover cost the average Washington water consumer 75 cents, but reduced the risk of terrorist hijackings by eliminating hundreds of chlorine tankers rumbling through the capital region. [ Chemical industry lobbyists succeeded in killing the bill]
P 189
“We are not going to turn this country into a fortress,” [DHS official] Liscouski snapped. “I have every confidence that the private sector will act responsibly,” he added. “That they will do the right thing on their own.” That was quite a leap of faith, given the slew of recent corporate scandals at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and Adelphia, And it also flew in the face of reality. The Economist in its august 2003 issue, published a survey of 331 large corporations; it found that security spending had risen only 4 percent since 9/11, and much of the increase was chalked up to higher insurance premiums…”Left to themselves,” noted Steven Flynn, a homeland security scholar at the Council of Foreign Relations, “factory owners will do nothing. They have no incentive to. If factory A, say, spends a million dollars on security upgrades, its products can’t compete with factory B down the street, which spent nothing. And yet if terrorists blow up factory Z on the other side of the country, factories A and B will suffer equally, since the whole industry will go down the drain. Only legislation can level the playing field.”
Chapter 9 – The Scientific Sentinels – the focus here is on gadgets, particularly the high tech development area in DHS
Chapter 10 – Cogs in the Machine – Coast Guard and containers
Epilogue – Losing Altitude – no one has been held responsible for 9/11 failings – coordination among first responders is lacking – DHS is inadequate – the feds don’t want to tell locals anything – as 9/11 fades in memory the desire to apply to security issues wanes – the Iraq war drains potential resources
P 239
A secret White house memo leaked to the press in 2004 lists DHS among the federal agencies slated for post-election cuts.
July 6, 2008
Pointless fear-mongering about the ills of technology. The Nazi, Russian, East German, Cambodian, and Chinese secret police forces managed to have very effective intelligence collection methods without spy satellites or the internet.
The rise of a police state has much more to do with the social and political climates of the time than it does to do with the technology available.
The rise of a police state has much more to do with the social and political climates of the time than it does to do with the technology available.
October 27, 2013
“Fortress America” by Matthew Brzezinski
“Fortress America” by Matthew Brzezinski is a book about post 9/11 counter terror actions to avoid the threat of biological warfare or another terrorist attack against the United States. The actions of the U.S. vary from Air travel measures being severely increased, to scanners in common cities discreetly stashed for detecting any disease in the air. Throughout the book, Matt interviews different government officials to get to the bottom line of what we’re doing to avoid vulnerability. As of September 11th, 2001, the war on crime and drugs, shifted to a war on terror.
Matthew Brzezinski’s, “Fortress America”, earnestly depicts the U.S. surveillance systems; along with the different government departments, to include the CIA and newly founded Homeland Security with their tactics against terrorism. Matt uses valuable imagery to describe the different tasks of the officials, along with the key technology used in the war on terror. The book also portrays post 9/11 racial profiling. Reflecting how the different departments of government accused innocent people of conspiracy to terrorism, along with a brief description of how they were treating those falsely incarcerated.
Brzezinski’s opinions were the only downside of the book. Matt reluctantly would talk of how the United States lacked certain defenses; remaining vulnerable. Matt also compares the precautions taken in Israel against terrorism to the U.S. for a need of increased defense.
Overall it was an interesting and satisfying read. “Fortress America” taught me about surveillance and future counter terror measures to be taken in the U.S. This book is not meant for the squeamish. I believe the read’s more for a developed reader with interest in the domestic defense of the United States.
“Fortress America” by Matthew Brzezinski is a book about post 9/11 counter terror actions to avoid the threat of biological warfare or another terrorist attack against the United States. The actions of the U.S. vary from Air travel measures being severely increased, to scanners in common cities discreetly stashed for detecting any disease in the air. Throughout the book, Matt interviews different government officials to get to the bottom line of what we’re doing to avoid vulnerability. As of September 11th, 2001, the war on crime and drugs, shifted to a war on terror.
Matthew Brzezinski’s, “Fortress America”, earnestly depicts the U.S. surveillance systems; along with the different government departments, to include the CIA and newly founded Homeland Security with their tactics against terrorism. Matt uses valuable imagery to describe the different tasks of the officials, along with the key technology used in the war on terror. The book also portrays post 9/11 racial profiling. Reflecting how the different departments of government accused innocent people of conspiracy to terrorism, along with a brief description of how they were treating those falsely incarcerated.
Brzezinski’s opinions were the only downside of the book. Matt reluctantly would talk of how the United States lacked certain defenses; remaining vulnerable. Matt also compares the precautions taken in Israel against terrorism to the U.S. for a need of increased defense.
Overall it was an interesting and satisfying read. “Fortress America” taught me about surveillance and future counter terror measures to be taken in the U.S. This book is not meant for the squeamish. I believe the read’s more for a developed reader with interest in the domestic defense of the United States.
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January 22, 2014A perspective on defense from within, this book focuses on counterterrorism. Current, prospective, and projected methods are scrutinized. The question seems to be whether the nation will choose liberty or, at any cost, security now and in the future.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews