There is a comedian one liner that goes Q: "Why do we have the Department of Homeland Security?" A: "Because the Russians own the trademark on KGB."

Its one of those painful chuckles.

That said, take down notices from law enforcement or intelligence agencies would generally cite either an investigation in progress or a confidential information. I saw a takedown which related to the a video that included extensive footage of the federal building in San Jose. The amateur music video was using the concrete pillars for some coreographic moves but the Feds complained it contained too much 'site intelligence' with respect to the building. Which you really couldn't argue with, watching it you could see where all the fire exits were, office partitions, etc etc.

Because in the wake of 9/11 one major criticism of how the US had managed (very real) threats was that it was operating an incompetently coordinated hodgepodge of fiefdoms that in many cases at an organization leadership level were set up to sabotage each other in much the same fashion as Eichenwald describes Microsoft's stack-ranking debacle.

One possible answer was thought to be, put all non-military national security under one umbrella and have it report cabinet-level to the President, so you won't have some petty squabble between the Coast Guard and I don't know INS preventing operations from being executed.

Obviously, the Federal Government is not in fact Voltron, and glomming together a bunch of large bureaucracies into one giant bureaucracy doesn't make government more efficient. But it's not an Illuminati plot, if that's what you're getting at.

Or... what, you just don't like the name? Would you prefer "The United States Coastal, Border, and Federal Emergency Customs, Immigration, Transportation and Protective Services Intelligence and Management Agency"?

In the US, "state" has a different meaning from most countries, and "federal" is rather unpopular in certain circles. Hence the term "homeland".

In most times and places, the institution would be called "State Security". Which is a commonly used name for the main instrument of repression in totalitarian countries (for instance Stasi or Securitate, both of which went by the full name "Department of State Security".)

Most free countries have given their national security agency a rather more neutral name and a less powers to distance themselves from such practices. The US has chosen to actually start an agency with that name and give it unprecedented powers. You do the math.

9/11.

Kind of funny how a department setup to ostensibly protect us from terrorists is now involved in taking down websites and sending DMCAs.

The 'National Homeland Security Agency' was conceived by the Hart-Rudman Commission, the results of which were released in January of 2001.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Commission_on_National_Secur...

Shortly thereafter G.W.Bush started pushing for the National Guard to become "more involved in homeland security."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yctFAAAAIBAJ&sjid=y...

Several months later 9/11 happened.

Because "Motherland" and "Fatherland" were taken?