This is a little weird. I was never aware that "the Homeland" encompassed the entire continent of North America.
We noticed a little detail from yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee meeting that seemed worth highlighting. During that meeting, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, an unabashed and adamant defender of the NSA's surveillance programs, had the duty of presenting a map created by the NSA showing terror activity it has disrupted.
(When she says the two programs "essentially work together," she's largely trying to help bolster the embattled Section 215 phone call metadata collection, which has been subject to far more scrutiny and appears to have been far less successful than its counterpart.)
There's no doubt that the use of the term "Homeland" in this context is unusual. I've always understood both countries as autonomous from the U.S. I sure don't remember the so-called "North American Union" ever passing after it was bandied about during the Bush administration. Regardless, it has always reminded me of the mid-Twentieth Century Communist rhetoric used mostly in eastern Europe.
The Atlantic Wire was the first to pick up on the apparent discrepancy.
(via the Associated Press, here's a close-up on that map)
Normally, this would be written off as a design goof, as one of the NSA's (newly adept) graphics guys using a little more light blue than he ought.
This being the NSA, we're not inclined to offer that benefit of the doubt. Is this a way of blending in Canadian and Mexican terror activity disruptions (which, we'll remind you, is different from actual plots interrupted) to give a larger sense of the NSA's success at halting terrorism within our borders?
They make a good point. IIRC, back when Snowden made his first disclosure. Rep. Mike Rogers came out and said "One" terrorist plot was thwarted using the NSA program in question. But since that time, I watched various officials paraded out with estimates of a dozen plots thwarted -- to dozens of plots -- to today's claim of 54 plots foiled.
We don't and can't know, of course, since the information about almost all of these 54 events is classified. Just know that the homeland is safe — be it Tampa, Toronto, or Tijuana — and that it's all thanks to the NSA.
Someone's got some 'splainin' to do.