Critical Releases in Homeland Security: February 27, 2019

"Consistent with the President's National Security Strategy, this new NSAS [National Strategy for Aviation Security] focuses first on protecting the United States and its interests. It broadens the scope of potential threats to, or disruption of, the Aviation Ecosystem beyond the previous more narrow focus on terrorist groups, criminals, and hostile nation states to also include insiders, foreign intelligence activities, and the spread of infectious disease via air travel. The new NSAS directs a holistic and adaptive approach to securing the Aviation Ecosystem that prioritizes enhanced domain awareness, collection of anticipatory information, augmentation and sustainment of layered security measures, improved system resilience, and effective engagement with government and private-sector partners. The NSAS underscores the importance of, and recognizes the interdependent roles of, Federal, State, and local authorities, the private-sector, and international partners to securing the system and facilitating aviation safety and commerce."

"The National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel presents an integrated plan to ensure the United States stops terrorist attempts to travel to conduct attacks on the homeland or against our interests abroad. The strategy outlines how the United States Government will expand coordination and maximize the full capabilities of Federal departments and agencies to identify, detect, and deter terrorists from transiting international borders. The United States Government will use all available tools to constrain terrorist travel planning, facilitation, and mobilization, including providing support to law enforcement, private-sector partners, and communities. Key to detecting and interdicting terrorists attempting to travel will be enhancing systems that validate identities and advancing the use of biometric technologies. The United States Government will work closely with state, local, tribal, and territorial governments to achieve these goals. The strategy also recognizes that the United States cannot pursue these goals alone - our foreign partners are vital to the effort to identify, disrupt and deter terrorist travel. The United States Government will therefore leverage foreign partners to improve global travel security capabilities and capacity consistent with strong counterterrorism (CT) measures that the United States has pioneered since the attacks of September 11, 2001."