HLS 6000 DF7 Assignment Paper: Initial Homeland Security

WEEK 7 DISCUSSION QUESTION
BACKGROUND
As the director of Homeland Security for a municipality in the greater Boston area, you sit on a weekly department head meeting with town leadership. This week, the discussion turns towards intelligence, and what should we be doing to develop and inform the department heads on what the threat situation is in our area.
The Mayor asks you, and the Chief of the Police and Fire Departments to draft a concept paper on the establishment of an intelligence working group. The purpose would be to develop unclassified intelligence product on a weekly basis which informs decision makers on the overall threat level, and provides department heads with a baseline of information from which to generate actionable intelligence.
The town’s legal counsel is concerned about the “optics” of intelligence collection-how will this be perceived by the public? He is concerned that all source intelligence may be abused or accidentally released. The Police Chief tells him that there are legal procedures in place for criminal investigations which could apply, but Counsel is not buying that-there may not be any evidence of any criminal activity. He suggests that there may be oversight protections used by the government which could ensure a balance of privacy vs. security.
QUESTION 1
Give one example of an oversight process (or an existing procedure) you would recommend and why? 
QUESTION 2
Was Bin Laden the key to AQ’s strategic and operational efforts? If he had been killed, would AQ have not survived? If that strategic assessment was in place, should the US have made all efforts to kill him?