| Home | Information Sharing & Analysis | Prevention & Protection | Preparedness & Response | Research | Commerce & Trade | Travel Security | Immigration |
The threat level in the airline sector is High or Orange. Read more.
Release Date: 11/18/03 00:00:00
Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary. It is an honor to share this day with you, and with Asa Hutchinson, Joe Whitley, and Dan Sutherland, such great public servants. But I must especially thank the Secretary and also the Deputy Secretary-designate, Admiral Jim Loy, who have been such gracious supporters not only of me personally, but of the privacy office since its inception, and I am honored to share our daily mission with each of them.
A quick thank you as well to the team that put this event together, Tina Hubbell, Susan Courtwright, and Valerie Crawford, and to the entire privacy and disclosure team - some 300 strong across the department, some of whom are with us today.
And a very special thank you to my family to traveling to be here with me at this ceremony today - my parents, my sister, and my nieces and nephews. And most importantly, I thank my beloved husband who has supported me, over his own self-interest, in taking this job, and in doing this job. As the Secretary has said many times, the spouses and families of DHS employees deserve special credit for their patriotism, and for putting up with all of us as we engage in this all-consuming endeavor. For my husband, this has meant that he cooks a lot more of the dinners (that's actually a really good thing for me, since he's the much better cook) and he also bears a lot more of the dog-walking and other responsibilities in our house these days.
I'm also struck by the fact that, while I am truly honored and humbled both to have been selected to serve the President, the Secretary, and the country in this manner, this oath is not the first, or even the most important one that I have been privileged to take from some part of this Department. In fact, the first swearing-in ceremony in which I took part was some 21 years ago, when I took the oath of citizenship. As my dad likes to say, you all may be citizens through the good fortune of your birth, but I am a citizen by choice.
And what a choice my parents made - to bring their children from Northern Ireland to a place that would afford greater freedoms - freedom of economic opportunity, freedom from discrimination, freedom to worship freely, and so important to us today - the freedom from fear. Freedom not only from the wrenching and pervasive fear of random acts of terrorism, but freedom also from the fear of government intrusion, of arbitrary government action, and of random government surveillance.
As I told the Secretary in my interview for this job, I don't believe in the saying, "it's business, it's not personal." For me, this job is very personal. Not only did we have a member of our family injured in the attacks on the World Trade Center, but given our family's, and our extended family's experience of domestic terrorism, a life without those fears is essential to my construct of the American experience. The very freedom to live without fear of this type of violence is part of the beacon of hope that this country sends to families like mine around the world. And I am committed to providing for our children, as my parents provided for me, a childhood that is free from fear - free from fear of violence, but also fear from excessive or inappropriate governmental intrusion. That is not to say that there is no appropriate role for government action--on the contrary. Our very Declaration of Independence articulates a limited but essential role for the federal government, and that is as the "guardian for our future security." There is no more important role for our federal government than to provide a safe space for our citizens and our visitors - in both mind and body. I am honored to be a small part of that mission.
And I am confident that this mission can be accomplished while respecting the privacy and civil liberties of the individual. Again, as the Secretary has said and I constantly repeat: our job is to protect America, in both its tangible and intangible assets. The role of the Department is not only to protect the people and places of this country, it is to protect the liberties and the way of life that make this country great.
The protection of privacy, of the dignity of the individual, is not a value that can be added on to this or any other organization later, and that is why I am so pleased to have been here from almost the very beginning. This value is one that must be embedded in the very culture and structure of the organization. I know that we can and will succeed in this - not only because our leadership believes in protecting the sanctity of the individual, but also because our over 180,000 employees are also great Americans, who believe in and act on these values - for themselves, their neighbors, and their children - each day.
It is a tremendous honor to serve as the first statutorily appointed privacy officer for this or any other federal department. It has been called an impossible job, and I obviously disagree. But even if it is, no matter. St. Francis of Assisi wrote, "Start by doing what is necessary. Next do what is possible. And suddenly, you are doing the impossible." We here at Homeland Security are already doing what others have called impossible.
Thank you.
This page was last reviewed/modified on 11/18/03 00:00:00.