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US "Fusion Centers" For Intelligence Sharing
Wired has an article on the national fusion centers in the US, which were created to aid intelligence-sharing in the fight against terrorism but are increasingly being used to look at other sorts of crimes. The keynote of these centers is "all hazards, all threats" — the LA police chief is quoted: "Information that might seem innocuous may have some connection to terrorism." The ACLU has up an interactive US map to help you become acquainted with your local fusion center.
Though over here I believe they are regional Counter Terrorism Units.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/gordon_brown_jack_bauer_ctu_counter_terror_plan/
liqbase
In other words, these are data mining centers, designed to organize and classify the information obtained via unconstitutional surveillance and data sharing programs, in addition to the myriad of legal sources. There, FBI personnel will work hard to ensure that nobody who orders pizza at 11:43PM, while purchasing a copy of "Diary of Anne Frank" online, gets away with the undoubtedly terrorist activities they might be planning (they may not even know it themselves, but that's just because the data mining is so good).
Fusion in our lifetime!
Ok, so it's standard practice not to read TFA, so not including a link to the wired article in the summary would seem to save time.
However, if you'd like to read the article, I think this is it:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/feds-tout-new-d.html
A Human Right
"I was frustrated when I met with the [ACLU] report authors and they could not point to a single instance of a fusion center violating someone's civil rights or liberties," Harman said. "In fact, state and local laws and protections in place at many fusion centers are more rigorous than their federal counterparts."
Ahem: California's Anti-Terrorism Information Center admitted to spying on anti-war groups in 2003. And Denver's police department built their own secret spy files on Quakers and 200 other organizations.
It looks like there's already some scope creep. Does anyone else hear a voice in their head saying, "Slippery slope! What's happening to America!"
Mental note: Jane Harman D-CA. Must tell CA relatives about this when her seat is up for reelection.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
When I was young the police used to watch over the people, now they're watching the people.
Shh.
Just some things to ponder...
Please start tracking me ... I am a firm believer in the non-violent overthrow of the United States Government. Politicans need to be changed like diapers, and often for the same reason.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Terrorism Terrorism Terrorism.
I thought most people kept up with the Jones. The rest of the real world doesn't give a fuck about America and their bogey man lies about terrorism. They cried wolf too many times. When I hear this rhetoric I switch off.
9-11 was a fluke. yet it has been used to systematically rape the bill of rights, that 'goddamn piece of paper' as our beloved leader calls it.
until americans wake up, this country is going to hell. we are on a path that will make the ussr & east germany look like pussies. don't forget, torture is an american value now too. can't just use it on the really bad guys, or that would be discriminatory. gotta use it on everyone equally, because that's the new american way.
have a great day
-.no
The NSA had been listening in our calls for decades. My understanding is that it was never used on internal threats. With the patriot act combined with W's/telecom illegal spying, that changed everything. In particular, most ppl do not remember, but about 2 weeks after patriot act was passed, the DOJ announced that they had busted a large gang that hailed from Venezuela and was simply passing drugs all over. Ok, that sounds like a good thing. But within another month after that, it was discovered that there was spying on a dem state senators in mass. The simple fact is, that DOJ and the white house can not be trusted. Even if Obama gets it, I would not want him to have this. Why? Because power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. W. and his henchman have been illegal throughout this admin. I expected that. But I believe that if we continue with this power, even the most honest of politicians will be corrupted.
I have said it before, and I will say it here again. Take us back to where the NSA was quietly listening in, but only shared info when it pertained to an outside threat. For starters, all of their listening is done via computers. The DOJ should go back to requiring warrants, and the DOD should be bared from listening in within the USA (which, patriot act and several of W's orders gave permission to do). Then have the NSA back to being staffed ONLY by professionals and not the politicians that W installed. IOW, it is time that we return to a professional approach to intel, rather than the bunch of NAZI thugs that we have allowed to set up camp due to so many ppl being afraid.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
FBI personnel will work hard to ensure that nobody who orders pizza at 11:43PM, while purchasing a copy of "Diary of Anne Frank" online
The point of data mining is that some connections are not obvious at all, pizza and books are legitimate pieces of data from a scientific/statistical point of view.
We know that the enemy favors couriers, a routine delivery person like a pizza delivery boy makes a good courier. Especially since it is an easily acquired job.
Common books have been used for ciphers for centuries.
The FBI has successfully mapped out organized crime networks through data mining of the most inconsequential and trivial looking information. It is likely that this technique will be successful against other groups as well. You may rightfully question the legality of acquisition methods and raise privacy concerns, but mocking the technique only demonstrates an ignorance of the topic.
Oh geez can you imagine if the Internet had been around when Anne Frank was alive? That diary would have been a lot shorter but at least it would been online and she could have liveblogged the whole Holocaust to the rest of the world:
6 June 1944
I see the world gradually being turned into a wasteland. I hear the ever approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions of people and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I somehow feel that all this will come right again, that also this savagery will stop, that there will be peace and tranquillity in the world once again.
Until that time, I must hold onto my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll still be able to realise them.
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July 1, 1944
If I'm watched to that extent, I start by getting snappy, then unhappy and finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I so would like to be, and what I could be, if, there weren't any other people living in the world.
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NOTE: THIS BLOG HAS BEEN ARCHIVED OR SUSPENDED FOR A VIOLATION OF OUR TERMS OF SERVICE
Despite what the article states about the focus of these fusion centers on anti-terrorism, they do a lot of things which focus on domestic crimes. This can be anything from serial killers, drug trafficking, to serial robberies. This data is being aggregated at the fusion centers and the OneDOJ (among others) program is going to aggregate it again to make better sense of it so that inter-state crimes can be better investigated and solved by sharing the information. These fusion centers receive a lot of flak when viewed strictly from the perspective of anti-terrorism because they are collecting data that isn't necessarily connected to terrorist acts. That data is for other criminal activity. The data is collected based on pre-existing police reports, investigations, etc. so the gov't isn't doing anything extraordinary here besides tearing down walls between federal, state, local, and tribal agencies in order to better solve past crimes and maybe, hopefully, prevent further ones by performing statistical analysis on the criminal data.
For example, by seeing that a new business opening up is located in the same part of a city as a string of new criminal activity the local police department can have more patrols out to make sure the criminals realize they are being watched. Obviously that is at the local level but this type of data mining on *existing data* helps the feds too.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
The East Germans had the exact same thing called the Stasi Secret Police . Your friends and neighbours even your relatives would pass on details about you to your local representative in the name of crime and social harmony. It worked great until those dam Americans stuffed it all up.........eh wait a minute.
See the pattern yet. You stood there and let the Bush regime murder and torture people. What happened when they announced it? Nothing, becuase they just said "Well, you knew it was happening, if you really objected you should have stopped it" and so they didn't get away with it, they just changed the rules to allow it. If you let these people normalise it in the culture you're too late.
In 5 years when this information is used to imprison people they'll stand there and say "Well you knew it was happening and you didn't stop it". One of the things I love about America is that they're so convinced they don't put up with any shit that when shit happens they either claim they want it to happen or ignore it. Stop waiting for them to announce that they're profiling you to object, you know it's happening, act now, FORCE CHANGE.
I honestly don't care though, why would I care about a country who has allowed a million innocent iraqis die, torture people, attempt to bully the rest of the world, and then have people like Ann Coulter on their television channels saying that all camel jockies should be killed becuase they killed 3 thousand americans in Iraq.
You gave up the rights of others to live, no one should ever do that.
...the 2006 film The Lives of Others, which presents Germany's more recent past in a way that seems a lot more like a potential American future than the Godwinian parallels most people seem to draw.
While I can't comment on the accuracy of the film's portrayal of the GDR in 1985 (it looked convincing, but I wasn't there), I can say its portrayal of a subtle, businesslike surveillance state, quite unlike the obviously super-evil third reich half a century earlier, seemed a lot more efficient in eliminating dissent.
Dramatic disappearances in the night? Dissidents gunned down in the streets? No, if you spoke out against the GDR (again, at least as envisioned in the film), you didn't have to fear for your life. You just found your career a little "harder" to continue in. You found life gradually less satisfying... Shipped off to a torture chamber with all manner of horrific devices? No, just sent to a little room. To talk. For a long time. Until you cooperated.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
In the eyes of the government it seems that Terrorism is anything that is against government interest.
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...