Remaking Domestic Intelligence

A new solution for reforming U.S. domestic intelligence.


Domestic intelligence in the United States today is undermanned, uncoordinated, technologically challenged, and dominated by an agency--the FBI--that is structurally unsuited to play the central role in national security intelligence. Despite its importance to national security, it is the weakest link in the U.S. intelligence system. In Remaking Domestic Intelligence, Richard A. Posner reveals all the dangerous weaknesses undermining our domestic intelligence in the United States and offers a new solution: a domestic intelligence agency modeled on the concept and basic design of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.


He details why the FBI, because its primary activity is law enforcement, is not the solution to the problem of domestic intelligence and how a new agency, lodged in the Department of Homeland Security, would have no authority to engage in law enforcement and thus avoid the deep tension between criminal investigation and national security intelligence that plagues the FBI. He also shows how a new U.S. domestic intelligence agency might offer additional advantages over our current structure even in terms of civil liberties.