Author: Amos N Guiora
ISBN No: 97814 398 3818
Review date: 15/08/2026
No of pages: 199
Publisher: CRC Press
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Amos N Guiora is a Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, the University of Utah. Heโs a former Israel Defence Forces lieutenant-colonel.
A law professor has written a book on homeland security. As a book written by an Israeli based in the United States, mainly the book shows how North America has had to do some catching-up and growing-up after 9-11. โOfficials must prepare for the worst, be it a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. The worst may be yet to come. Discouragingly, business leaders repeatedly utter the same cliches … the reality is harsh: the overwhelming majority of business leaders – small and large alike – have failed to develop sophisticated business continuity models.โ Guiora does do more than deplore shortcomings, and does cover cost-benefit analysis, and common sense (did the US airport security man have to ask the nun to take off her wooden leg?). Guiora does not ask why the United States, with a history of liberty, has allowed a massive multi-billion-dollar Department of Homeland Security. The DHS is there to keep Americans safe, but also to take the rap when or if something goes wrong; hence the irrational keeping to airport screening and other rules in the name of security. This is a policy book rather than a practitionerโs, covering for example border security and terrorism financing. A chapter on business continuity is of most interest to corporate security readers. In is introduction, Guiora makes the crucial point that police (and nearly everyone else) involved in homeland security โalso have day jobsโ; the answer, surely, is to make homeland (or any kind of) security a help to that day job, not another burden.
