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.

Comments

The UK just announced these as well

[LiquidCoooled]

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/

Re:The UK just announced these as well

[NeverVotedBush]

We should call them "Departments of Precrime" because essentially, that's what they are.

Read: data mining

[TheMeuge]

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).

Re:Read: data mining

[vertinox]

they may not even know it themselves, but that's just because the data mining is so good

Thats the problem with crimes of theory rather than actual crimes that took place. If you documented every single action of any citizen, you could eventually cherry pick enough activities that are statistically related to being a terrorist and then haul the person in front of a court and say "This person was planning on committing a terrorist act! Our database shows the following activities that give a 95% probability of a plan to commit terrorist related activities."

Since they aren't accusing you of an actual crime that you carried out, you can only dispute whether or not you actually did the things in the list. Since you cannot say they you didn't do those things in the list, then you must be a terrorist according to their logic unless you somehow prove that those actives are not related to terrorism.

That is a harder to defend against since the crime in question was whether or not you were going to do something and not if you actually did it. Sadly, you cannot have someone crack open your brain and discern what you were really thinking for the past year and even if you take a polygraph the cards are stacked against you due to interrogation techniques.

Eventually, if such a scenario did occur, there will be a chilling effect and many people will be guessing what those activities are... Attending anti-war rallies... Writing anti-government blog posts... Or generally belonging to the wrong political party and then simply stop doing them out of fear of showing up as a probable terrorist.

Re:Read: data mining

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

See, it wasn't supposed to work like that, at least on paper. The federal government was only *supposed* to have a small list of powers given in the Constitution, and it was supposed to be up to the people wanting to implement new stuff to justify it based on the list of things the feds were allowed to do.

Of course, your question is apparently completely appropriate today, because it seems that government at any level is allowed to do anything they want, unless it's explicity forbidden in the Bill of Rights (and sometimes even that doesn't matter). It appears that nowadays if you can't muster the cash to pay for a squad of lawyers to prove to another squad of lawyers that the government is explicitly not allowed to do something, then it can just happen freely by default.

Re:Read: data mining

[AHumbleOpinion]

Under previous regimes and in precedent times such organizations where named "Stasi" and "KGB". Oh, Amerika, you are becoming what you fought so hard against...

Not really, the FBI is subject to the oversight of a freely and fairly elected congress. That's incredibly different than the precedents you offer. Collecting and analyzing data is something that law enforcement has legitimately done for centuries, data mining is just automation.

Re:Read: data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, the FBI is subject to the oversight of a freely and fairly elected congress. Yeah, it's so great the the Pelosi/Reid led Congress has been having hearings about such important things like steroid use in baseball 10 years ago.

BFD.

What about the FISA extension that Congress left unvoted on for weeks? What about looking into the junk mortgage market?

No, we found out Roger Clemens is a lying sack of shit.

finally

[nguy]

Fusion in our lifetime!

No link to wired article?

[grassy_knoll]

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

Scope Creep

[iknownuttin]

FTFA:Jane Harman (D-California), a powerful force in intelligence matters and funding, pooh-poohed the ACLU's concerns, and said she supported both fusion centers, and civil liberties.

"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.

Smothered Hope...

[headkase]

When I was young the police used to watch over the people, now they're watching the people.

Power expands to fill all available space

[jonaskoelker]

Wired has an <a>article</a> Not fixed. The again, we don't read articles around here ;)

on the national fusion centers in the US, which were created to aid intelligence-sharing in the fight against terrorism How much terrorism has happened recently? Hasn't enough resources been put into fighting it?

but are increasingly being used to look at other sorts of crimes. Hmm... is this perhaps part of a "we're tough on crime" bullet to put on the election checklist? Or possibly a way to hand more power to the law enforcement?

Just some things to ponder...

WARNING: Contains references to BOGEY MAN

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery

[AHumbleOpinion]

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.

Re:Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery

[vertinox]

You may rightfully question the legality of acquisition methods and raise privacy concerns, but mocking the technique only demonstrates an ignorance of the topic.

Torture is also great way to find criminals. As one of the Pol Pot interrogators in Cambodia once stated (in that History Channel documentary which I'm paraphrasing), "After a while, I was surprised how much anti-government activity was going on in our nation and reported this to my superior! We were ordered to double the amount of persons we tortured and through their confession we found that the anti-government conspiracy was even larger than we ever imagined!"

The point being is that using these techniques used in a certain way can make criminals out of otherwise innocent people through circumstance or confessions. If you throw an innocent person in jail and then interrogate him for a few hours (non-tortured mind you) and then show him that his pizza boy was a carrier for organized crime and then showed him enough material he might actually start believing it too and sign a confession at a certain point.

Its why many distraught family members often confess to murder of a loved one when they are questioned long enough and accused of the crime.

Yes, of course it can find real criminals, but used in the wrong way you can find a lot more than you expected.

Re:Nothing wrong with data mining pizza delivery

[vertinox]

Wrong. Torture generates a lot of bad leads, interrogators are told what they want to hear.

If a court determines who is a criminal and who is not, then by default a confession of a crime makes the person a criminal regardless of if its true. I think I may have missed a sarcasm tag about torture though. That was the point of the Pol Pot interrogator who was truly shocked on how many criminals he was finding among the populace which just what the interrogator wanted to hear.

No criminality is determined by data mining. It is statistically generating a list of people to check out.

But isn't there a bias towards the investigators that these persons are indeed criminals? If an investigator believes this person is the most likley candidate according to their dataset, regardless of it really was that person who committed the crime, would they not naturally treat the person as the criminal until they find some other information that said otherwise.

Now a more calm and collected investigator would keep all options on the table, but wouldn't a more zealous one haul the person in for questioning and then accuse them of the crime and attempt to gather information with hopes they can make them break?

Human nature cannot be taken out of the equation and information will be abused to acheive their goals. This can never be denied.

Diary of Anne Frank

[MillionthMonkey]

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

Re:all in the name of '9-11'

[TubeSteak]

that 'goddamn piece of paper' as our beloved leader calls it. That "quote" keeps getting brought up, probably because it jives with your perceptions of President Bush.

AFAIK he never said that.
Here's what I had to say about it in Oct of 2006
Here's what factcheck.org has to say about it

The guy writing capitolhillblue has a history of bullshit, retracted the story, then put it back online even though no one else could substantiate his story and every other blogger on the internet apologized for repeating it.

Stop repeating one man's lie.

Stasi Police

[EEPROMS]

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.

It's too late

[JamesRose]

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.

Re:Terror and it's definition

[BountyX]

In the eyes of the government it seems that Terrorism is anything that is against government interest.