Report Slams DHS Fusion Centers: No Terrorists Nabbed, Civil Rights Violated

PolygamousRanchKid writes with news of a Senate report on just how ineffective those DHS "Fusion centers" have proven to be. From the article: "The lengthy, bipartisan report is a scathing evaluation of what the Department of Homeland Security has held up as a crown jewel of its security efforts. ... Because of a convoluted grants process set up by Congress, Homeland Security officials don't know how much they have spent in their decade-long effort to set up so-called fusion centers in every state. ... 'The subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot,' the report said. When fusion centers did address terrorism, they sometimes did so in ways that infringed on civil liberties. The centers have made headlines for circulating information about Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU, activists on both sides of the abortion debate, war protesters, and advocates of gun rights."

Comments

Surprise!

[Shaman]

There are virtually no government ministries that are effective, why would this one be different? Actually, it is... it's even less effective and even more insulting than most.

Re:Surprise!

[nschubach]

Yet it will be buried as a failure and ignore the next time someone wants to implement something similar.

Re:Surprise!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Be careful not to confuse dishonesty with ineffectiveness. If you go by their ostensible objective(reducing the already pretty tiny threat of 'terrorists' to an even tinier one), they are a total failure. Whether they have been quite as feckless on other metrics(number of jackboot keyboard jockeys employed, assorted entirely-legal-but-officially-disliked groups surveilled and/or COINTELPROed, etc.) is another question entirely.

Re:Surprise!

[ByOhTek]

it's even less effective and even more insulting than most.

IIRC it is partially a privately run organization (TSA). The only thing worse than government, is private contractors to government, because of (a) the private sector's belief that the government is a endless source of income, (b) the private sector's disdain for the government and (c) the general belief that the government is usually the worst at getting things done (so the blame tends to slide completely over the private contractors)*.

* Note, this isn't to absolve the government of their incompetence or irresponsibility - just to point out part of the problem that is overlooked.

Re:Surprise!

[gman003]

More succinctly put:

Government private contractors combine the worst parts of the government-run systems with the worst parts of a corporate-run system, while bringing in few to none of the intended benefits of either.

The government side brings in ineffectiveness at designed purpose, and effective immunity from prosecution in event of error. The private side brings in a higher cost (gotta have a profit margin, after all) and an utter disregard for anything so trifling as "human rights". The combination of the two latters is particularly dangerous.

Re:Surprise!

[dkleinsc]

There are virtually no government ministries that are effective, why would this one be different?

I'm focusing on US agencies (I'm guessing you're from a country with a parliamentary system from your use of the term "ministry") since that's what's in question here.

As common a belief as it is that government doesn't do anything useful, it's simply not true:
* The VA demonstrably provides more health care bang for the buck than any other system in the US.
* The EPA has been quite effective at ensuring that we no longer have burning rivers, choking smog, serious levels of acid rain, and safe tap water.
* The FDA has been effective at ensuring that we can buy pharmaceuticals and know that we're getting what we think we're getting instead of quack remedies, and in ensuring that there's very very little chance of getting food poisoning from what you buy in a grocery store.
* The FCC does an excellent job of preventing one radio or TV station from interfering with the broadcasts of another.
* The NLRB has helped resolve lots of labor disputes before they turned into serious strikes or lockouts.
* The NHTSA does a good job of ensuring that you can drive down an Interstate Highway and be close to certain you won't hit a giant pothole or something and wreck just because of road conditions.
* State-level building codes do a pretty good job of ensuring that you aren't sold a new house where the roof is about to collapse, the wiring is about to catch on fire, or the plumbing about to leak sewage all over your floor.
* The FDIC ensures that if your bank collapses through no fault of your own, you won't lose your money, making bank runs a thing of the past (many folks who lived through the Depression can tell you stories about their dad coming home and announcing that their life savings were gone.)

I could go on, but the point is that most government agencies do a pretty good job of serving their original purpose. The problem is that they've done those things for so long that you take them for granted and stop thinking about them, and focus more on what they don't do than what they do do.

Now, in this case, I'm going to fault these agencies for being frauds, not for being ineffective.

Re:Surprise!

[kilfarsnar]

There are virtually no government ministries that are effective, why would this one be different?

Effective at what? Catching terrorists? Yes, I agree, not very effective. Effective at sweeping up all kind of information about all kinds of people, for use later by who knows whom for who knows what? Very effective.

Re:Surprise!

[TheLongshot]

As someone who works in the government contracting realm, I do find this attitude frustrating. I have found in general that government contractors do tend to be patriotic and want to do a good job in serving their government. Many are former military people, so the "disdain" just doesn't exist for most contractors. Also, most of them damn well know that there isn't endless money, which is why there is always a lot of work put in finding new work.

Not to say that government contracting is perfect, but in general they do a good job serving the needs of government. Now, you can question whether those jobs need to be done at all, but that isn't a question for contractors, who are mostly there to do what their customer wants. Most of the faults of contractors are similar to the faults of most private enterprises.

Not just for terrorism

[Nidi62]

A lot of these fusion centers do more than just work on terrorism-related issues. They deal with drug trafficking, kidnapping, organized crime, and other issues that concern both state and federal authorities and which require them to work together. Their primary role is really more of a clearinghouse, where state authorities can contact other state and federal agencies to share information, and they allow local state officials to work side by side with federal officials. On top of this, they provide for state governments what the CIA does for the White House, it gives the state analysts that can be called upon to give briefings on a regular basis as well as in more imediate cases, such as after the Dark Knight shooting in Colorado. It is important that state government officials know the drug, organized crime, etc situation in their state, and this is how they find out.

Re:Not just for terrorism

[squiggleslash]

It is important that state government officials know the drug, organized crime, etc situation in their state, and this is how they find out.

Perhaps, but the DHS was founded in an atmosphere of paranoia about terrorism. The rights that politicians granted it were granted in the belief that the DHS was necessary to prevent terrorists from killing large numbers of people. For it to be coopted into the war on drugs or anything similar is overreach in that context (even if there's some line item in some bill somewhere that allows it to do that.)

I think the DHS is a pretty absurd response to terrorism. But much of the opposition to it comes not from it obeying its perceived public mandate, but for a government agency to be endowed with such powers using them in contexts that were never publicly justified. Let the FBI work with local authorities if they have to on organized crime, and the DEA on drugs, but let's leave the monster of an organization tasked with investigating politically motivated violent crimes - out of it.

Russian Cyber attack on Water Pump

[Anonymous Coward]

And in other news, the Russian Cyber War attack on a SCADA system controlling a water pump that burned out the pump?
Well they decided it was an attack based on a Russian IP address for a control engineers login. He in turn points out that he was asked to check it when he was on holiday (in Russia), and that the pump burned out 5 months later due to simple wear and tear.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/dhs-false-water-pump-hack/

More over, the biggest part of this news is that the DHS already knew it wasn't a cyber attack when its press office was leaking details of the story.

As long as the DHS exists, and has a budget to defend it will do this. Just as the FBI has been equipping disgruntled individuals with terrorists garb (plans bombs weapons money) in order to arrest them as terrorists.
They'll keep leaking super secret terrorists plots that have Hollywood scenarios, but lucky they saved us from them, and can't tell us anything about them, other than they were DEFINITELY REAL.

Disband the DHS

[dywolf]

It was fishy 11 years ago when it was first created. It's still fishy now.
All the entities that were put under its umbrella (ICE, BCP, Coast Guard, etc) can and should go back to being seperate entities.

Actual Fusion

[halcyon1234]

Man, can you imagine if those funds had been put into researching and building actual fusion centers? The US would have nigh-unlimited energy and resources to distribute around the world, ending famine, starvation, poverty and oil tyrants. THAT would have done a hell of a better job of eliminating terrorists, I bet you.

DHS.. They need more money!

[brxndxn]

Just last week, Janet Napolitano testified before a congressional committee about the state of terrorism in America. She was testifiying exactly how you would expect the head of a government agency with endless authority and no clear-cut goal to testify. She was.. asking for more money, saying the terrorist threat is greater than ever before, and saying the DHS has helped to curb the terrorist threat.

So.. the DHS:
- We need more taxpayer money
- The terrorist threat is greater than ever before
- The DHS does a great job

Hrm.. seems like bullshit.

Don't forget Criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

A detective, Shannon Dowell, from a Fusion center has been implicated in setting up the "Gulf Port 7" (Occupy protesters) for felony charges:

http://houston.culturemap.com/newsdetail/09-06-12-a-chilling-police-infiltration-of-occupy-houston-port-protest-shines-a-harsh-spotlight-on-undercover-cops/

Last I heard about the case the detective claimed that he lost the USB drive with subpoenaed evidence down a storm sewer on the way to work the morning of his court appearance. Even finding out that a detective from a fusion center had been assigned to infiltrate occupy was difficult.

One of the protesters and his lawyer was interviewed on Democracy Now, here's the transcript: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/10/infiltrating_occupy_austin_activists_face_charges

People are really surprised by this???

[realsilly]

After the 1st plane flew into the 1st of the twin towers I knew our world changed. Within mere weeks our civil liberties were being stripped in the form of the Patriot act. But it was justified. "If a few innocents get caught in the nets for the sake of millions...."

Well we have gotten what we've asked for, right? We're more secure now, right?

By accepting the Patriot Act, we've given away our rights to not get caught up in nets like this, and because we've sat back quietly and let it happen we are at fault as citizens, and we have no room to complain.

People forget that if you don't like your limited choices at voting time, they can write in their vote, and if you are doing that because you disagree with the limited choices then you are indeed making the first step in stopping this bullshit. But if you vote for someone on the ballot and don't agree with what they stand for because the other choices suck too, you're just as much at fault.

Stop voting party lines, break from the mold, write in your vote, you're not throwing it away, that is just republican and democratic fear mongering to get you to vote for one of their two parties.

Politicians hated / feared Ross Perot because he stressed real change in our Government. Ron Paul is hated / feared for his stance being against the norm.

If enough people wrote in a vote and took away any majority to the limited parties on the ballot, who knows maybe there will be an awakening in Politics that things need to change and citizens won't stand for their rights being squashed any longer.

Ron Paul

[roman_mir]

When fusion centers did address terrorism, they sometimes did so in ways that infringed on civil liberties. The centers have made headlines for circulating information about Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU, activists on both sides of the abortion debate, war protesters, and advocates of gun rights"

- make a mental note that DHS treats Ron Paul supporters as 'terrorists'. Apparently at the minimum 15% of population of USA are on this terrorist list just according to this little fact.

Also note that Republicans and Democrats always are very capable of 'putting their differences aside' when attacking a third party candidate, especially as it was the case with Ron Paul. The Republican primary debates were televised by various networks, Ron Paul was mostly ignored, in one debate, hosted by CBS, Ron Paul got a total of 89 seconds of speaking time out of 90 minutes. Of-course there were 7 more people on stage, still, even if split evenly everybody could get almost 12 minutes of time. And that's with 'serious' people on stage like Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Gingrich and Santorum.

Why are Ron Paul supporters labelled as terrorists? Is it because Ron Paul wouldn't go to war with Iran?

Is it because Ron Paul wouldn't authorise torture of prisoners?

Is it because Ron Paul is against the federal government telling people how to live their lives? Some will say that leaving things up to States is wrong, they are missing the bigger point, that leaving things like that to federal government is completely wrong and unconstitutional. As to allowing people to deal with these issues on State level does not mean that the State should in fact interfere with people either! At the minimum there should be competition among States for residents.

Is it because Ron Paul wants to audit and eventually get rid of the Federal reserve? The Fed is the actual main tool of destruction of US economy with its inflationary policy.

Is it because Ron Paul actually wants to balance the budget and start working out the problem of debt? Yes, it means cutting all sorts of programs and departments, but a government that you cannot afford will destroy you.

Is it because Ron Paul is against bail outs, stimulus and any form of welfare including corporate welfare?

Is it because Ron Paul is honest about Medicare and SS being bankrupt? He offers a transition period off these programs by means testing people and cutting military spending, foreign aid spending and various illegal domestic programs first that are not Medicare and SS, and by allowing people to opt out of the system and save their money for themselves to take care of themselves.

Is it because Ron Paul is in general against government intervention into the economy?

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Of-course no MSM outlet is reporting on Gary Johnson being in the race, being on 47 ballots (and Washington DC) out of 50 in USA. He is not on all 50 yet because of lawsuits by Romney campaign. Gary Johnson is trying to prevent the debate between Romney and Obama with a court order or to be in that debate. Gary Johnson is also trying to get documents released that would show whether th

Perhaps it's better to have terrorists?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this might sound crazy, but perhaps the DHS should be given up entirely. Perhaps it is better to accept that terrorist attacks can and will happen occasionally instead of giving up civil liberties and spending billions of dollars trying to prevent them. What if some day civil liberties will have been undermined so much and there will be so much oppression that terrorists become freedom fighters? Shouldn't there be a balance of power between the people and the government, such that by risking their lives people fighting against an oppressive and undemocratic government could still stand a chance?