What are the capabilities and limitations of domestic intelligence efforts in supporting the homeland security enterprise? Do you feel that the U.S. is appropriately structured and resourced to adequately provide timely, accurate and actionable domestic intelligence to support the entire spectrum of intelligence users (customers) from the Federal government down to state and local agencies (both now and into the future)?

This paper should provide an examination of the various elements that comprise U.S. domestic intelligence efforts (from local law enforcement to national intelligence agencies) and how those entities contribute to the supporting the homeland security enterprise in collaboratively protecting American Citizens. In crafting your paper, it would be good to remember the lessons learned from the 9/11 Commission on the difficulties of getting various agencies from all three levels of government to collaborate as well as intelligence sharing lessons/recommendations. Also, address the capability of the homeland security enterprise to adequately identify and address future challenges. In developing your response, you should address challenges of providing for homeland security while maintaining civil liberties as well as emerging trends and patterns such as homegrown terrorism and the proliferation of communication encryption technologies. 

•  Note: As mentioned earlier in this course, remember that “homeland security” is made up of much more than just DHS. That agency is only one part of a larger Homeland Security Enterprise that includes [DHS] Departmental leaders and components [the 7 field agencies including USCG, CBP, ICE, USSS, etc], state, local, tribal, territorial and private sector partners and other… https://www.dhs.gov/strengthening-homeland-security-enterprise as well as many other essential federal agencies that play a role in HLS, such as the very important DOJ where the FBI is the lead agency for countering terrorism in the US (not DHS). Of importance in this paper is the role of the FBI as both a federal law enforcement arm, as well as its role as a a domestic focused intelligence organization.

Make sure you read the instructions carefully and that you focus your paper on answering the assigned questions. This assignment is a research paper, not an opinion paper, so you need to use scholarly sources to support your thesis.  Use formal academic writing and do not use the first person such as ‘I’ or ‘my’; see the OWL site on academic writing style (using appropriate language). Make sure you use APA style in-text parenthetical citations at the end of every sentence where you are quoting another’s ideas (or any information) that is not your own thoughts and words, like this (Bergen, 2015, para 14). Citations are required for paraphrases as well, but not the page or paragraph number in that case. I highly recommend you use the APUS writing guide  which can be found in the university library or at this link: APUS Style Guide for APA. You are welcome to use supplementary sources to compliment the assigned readings based upon your research, but make sure you use only scholarly and credible sources (do not use open websites and you never want to use Wikipedia for a college level paper). Also, dictionaries and encyclopedias as well as general news sites (like CNN) are not appropriate for college level research papers. A good example of what NOT to use is NSA.Gov1.info (which some students have tried to use in research papers), not only is it not the NSA webpage, the site loaded with bogus information and if you scroll down to the bottom it says “This is a parody of nsa.gov and has not been approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency or by any other U.S. Government agency.” Also, do not cite the weekly lessons as those are only basic information to start off the topic with. You need to use mainly scholarly and reputable academic books and journal articles. Refer to the guide provided to you as an attachment in the Midterm paper instructions here titled “How to find scholarly research sources for HLSS Courses.” Also, see the APUS Library Homeland Security Program Guide for good sources, as well as the APUS Research Primer and the APUS Library Research FAQs. For formatting, the best option is to use the example paper attached to the Midterm instructions as a template (for formatting purposes only).

Requirements:

– Written according to the APA style and format (parenthetical in-text citation formats only; not end notes or footnotes);

– Use Times New Roman 12 point font;

– 1 inch margins on all sides with no paragraph indentation other than the first line by .5 inches 

– Double space all text (no extra lines or spaces after a paragraph or section headings and no added font sizes or lines either) 

– A respectable number of credible resources used, cited in the paper as in-text citations, and included on the reference page. A good rule of thumb is at least 2 scholarly sources per page of content (a minimum of 2 new scholarly sources per page in a research paper is acceptable). Use those academic and credible sources provided to you throughout the course, as well as other scholarly material obtained from conducting your own research. Freely utilize appropriate and reputable academic sources, summarize in your own words (paraphrase) and cite accordingly.

– The paper must be free of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors (make sure to proof read before submission)

– Turn your paper in as a Word Document and title your assignment “LastnameHLSS302Final“.

– The appropriate SSGS Assignment Rubric 300-400 Level Classes Assignment Rubric (as appropriate for this course) will be used to evaluate this assignment.