by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
The 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Seems pretty straight forward, doesn’t it?
It is well established that citizens enjoy a certain amount of privacy under the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Amendments. The 9th Amendment’s statement that “[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” certainly implies a general right of privacy. Although there is no specific protection of a general privacy right in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, case law has been consistent in providing a fairly broad right to privacy under the “liberty” guarantee of the 14th Amendment.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin, (1818).
Seems like good advice, doesn’t it?
In America today, we as citizens have been usurped in our rights to privacy and to be free from unwarranted search and seizures. One of the primary methods used to usurp your rights are called Fusion Centers. They seem to have a rational purpose as they are designed to promote information sharing at the federal level between agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), U.S. Military, and state- and local-level government. I don’t think that is prime facie a bad thing that the left hand of government knows what the right hand is knows or is doing and that all of law enforcement is essentially equally informed. Uniform intelligence seems like a good idea, does it not? After all, there are countless novels, films and television shows based on the thrilling and idiotic situations created by intra-departmental in-fighting because unequal playing fields and ego battles make for good drama and/or comedy by their nature.
But what if that information is bad or otherwise unusable? Where do they get their information? Why are the military involved in domestic operations? What is being done with the data vis a vis security, privacy and retention? Are your rights being violated by either the collection or collation of personal information? Is there adequate oversight and are there adequate safeguards for citizen’s privacy and right to be free from unwarranted searches? Is the support seeking uniform information providing useful information and working on a practical level?
Let us first consider what a Fusion Center is and is not, if they are effective at their stated purpose and how their proper and improper function impairs your rights.
The Fusion Centers are an overarching program and method of managing the flow of information and intelligence across levels and sectors of government to integrate information for analysis. They are not operational support on either a daily or an emergency basis although some of the 72 known Fusion Centers operate in conjunction with and share facilities with some operational centers. They are a support centers driven by analysis; information management and logistics. An apt analogy would be they are a large part of the brain behind the brawn, not wearing jackboots themselves but certainly responsible for informing their marching orders. No one from a Fusion Center is ever going to kick in your door. That is what they are and are not. Again, their stated purpose is not necessarily a bad one: collating uniform information services for various law enforcement organizations and the military. But where are they getting their information from? How are they using it? It it providing benefits for the costs?
The American Civil Liberties Union has identified five systemic problems with fusion centers.
- Ambiguous Lines of Authority. In a multi-jurisdictional environment it is unclear what rules apply, and which agency is ultimately responsible for the activities of the fusion center participants.
- Private Sector Participation. Some fusion centers incorporate private-sector corporations into the intelligence process, potentially undermining privacy laws designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans, and increasing the risk of a data breach.
- Military Participation.Some fusion centers include military personnel in law enforcement activities in troubling ways.
- Data Mining. Federal fusion center guidelines encourage wholesale data collection and data manipulation processes that threaten privacy.
- Excessive Secrecy. Fusion centers are characterized by excessive secrecy, which limits public oversight, impairs their ability to acquire essential information and impedes their ability to fulfill their stated mission, bringing their ultimate value into doubt.
In a bipartisan report led by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) was released last week. The conclusion of the Federal Support For And Involvement In State And Local Fusion Centers – Majority And Minority Staff Report – Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations – United States Senate (Fusion Center Report or FCR hereafter) was that “DHS-assigned detailees to the centers forwarded ‘intelligence’ of uneven quality -– oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.” FCR, p. 27. Insult to injury, “DHS officials who filed useless, problematic or even potentially illegal reports generally faced no sanction for their actions, according to documents and interviews. Supervisors spoke with them about their errors, but those problems were not noted on the reporting officials’ annual performance reviews, and did not influence managers’ decisions about their salary raises, bonuses or career advancement, DHS officials told the Subcommittee. In fact, the Subcommittee investigation was able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes – he was required to attend an extra week of reporting training. [paragraph] The Subcommittee investigation also learned that DHS did not adequately train personnel it sent out to perform the extremely sensitive task of reporting information about U.S. persons – a job fraught with the possibility of running afoul of Privacy Act protections of individuals’ rights to associate, worship, speak, and protest without being spied on by their own government.” FCR, p. 27-28.
Bad reporting from Fusion Centers has resulted in huge embarrassments such as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment or TIDE, a database that allegedly contains “all information the U.S. government possesses related to the identities of individuals known or appropriately suspected to be or have been involved in activities constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism, with the exception of purely domestic terrorism information.” These individuals are labelled as KST’s, Known or Suspected Terrorists. As such, TIDE is meant to be the backbone of the “No Fly” List and the State Department’s Visa Checking System. Some of the terrorist suspects identified by the TIDE system? A two year old and the Ford Motor Company.When asked how a toddler could end up as a KST, Ole Broughton, who ran intelligence oversight at Homeland Security’s Intelligence and Analysis division from 2007 until last January, said that “intelligence officials had routinely put information on ‘associates’ of known or suspected terrorists into TIDE, without determining that that person would qualify as a known or suspected terrorist.” “Not everything in TIDE is KST,” Ken Hunt, a DHS privacy official, admitted to the Senate subcommittee.
This ineptitude is made even more troubling when you consider that public sources are not the only input for personal information regarding citizens. Much of the data is provided by the private sector which disturbingly doesn’t have the constraints on their actions to protect your privacy and rights that the government does. Compounding the problem is the issue of military involvement given that the 2012 Defense Authorization Act into law. Section 1031, clause “b”, article 2 defines a ‘covered person’ (someone possibly subject to martial law) as : “A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” If the wrong person gets the wrong idea about based upon wrong information? You too could be spirited off to Gitmo. If you want to be truly appalled by the incompetence of the Fusion Centers, I urge you to read the report for yourself.
There is an old adage in computing and data processing: Garbage in, garbage out. How much is the incompetence driven violation of your rights costing us? No one seems to be sure. The estimates range from $289 million to $1.4 billion, but according to this report, the actual costs may be even higher. Perhaps the biggest insult is that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano repeatedly misled Congress about the effectiveness of the Fusion Centers. “The Subcommittee
examined four such cases in which DHS claimed fusion centers made important or ‘key’ contributions to investigations of significant terrorist plots on U.S. soil. The Subcommittee investigation found that the claims made by DHS did not always fit the facts, and in no case did a fusion center make a clear and unique intelligence contribution that helped apprehend a terrorist or disrupt a plot. Worse, three other incidents examined by the Subcommittee investigation raised significant concerns about the utility of the fusion centers, and raised the possibility that some centers have actually hindered or sidetracked federal counterterrorism efforts. [paragraph] Federal officials have been well aware of these episodes, and the underlying weaknesses in fusion centers’ capabilities that likely contributed to them. But they have chosen not to highlight the considerable shortcomings of fusion centers in public appearances or in briefings to Congress. Instead they have chosen to portray fusion centers as ‘linchpins’ of the federal government’s fight to prevent terrorism, making ‘vital’ contributions to the federal government’s efforts to keep the country safe from another terrorist attack. This portrayal is simply at odds with the actual counterterrorism records of the fusion centers.” FCR, p. 84-85.
“Unfortunately, despite a significant investment of resources and time, fusion centers today appear to be largely ineffective participants in the federal counterterrorism mission. Much of the blame lies with DHS, which has failed to adequately implement a fusion center program that would produce the results it promised. But significant responsibility for these failures also lies with Congress, which has repeatedly chosen to support and praise fusion center efforts, without providing the oversight and direction necessary to make sure those efforts were cost effective and useful.” FCR, p. 105.
Spying on citizens for practicing behavior that is Constitutionally protected is allegedly illegal. Lying about people is allegedly a crime and a civil wrong given the particular circumstances. Yet here we are (again, if you consider COINTELPRO) in a situation where the government is trampling citizen’s rights for a little bit of security at exorbitant costs no one is really sure of and run by a people who seem to be content to lying to Congress and the public about what they do and how effective it is. All in the name of fighting “terrorism”; something that is about as likely to kill you as your own furniture.
So we again come to the heart of Franklin’s statement. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” We as a nation have given up essential liberty in the name of an irrational fear and temporary safety. What is even sadder is that alleged security is not only a violation of your rights by governmental and private actors used purposefully to circumvent your rights in ways that stifle legal challenge, but that the security is in actuality an illusion of security that can harm the innocent through no fault of their own and leaves them with little or no recourse. Is it any wonder the Electronic Privacy Information Center currently has filed suit against the DHS and other governmental bodies like the Virginia State Police over topics ranging from Fusion Center funding to compliance with the Federal Privacy Act by Fusion Centers to the deployment of airport scanning equipment which has been proven ineffective and possibly a health risk.
Should Fusion Centers be allowed to continue their failed mission? Or should they be shuttered, the DHS dismantled and/or the Patriot Act repealed? If were going to have an ineffective organization that hiders counterterrorism and interagency cooperation, why not just go back to the way things were before the Patriot Act? Should Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano be fired for her lies? Should she be fired for her incompetence? Clearly steps need to be taken to protect our civil rights and hold those in government responsible both for their protection and for wisely spending our tax dollars instead of perpetually pissing them away down an arguably unconstitutional hole.
What do you think?
_________________
Source(s): Federal Support For And Involvement In State And Local Fusion Centers – Majority And Minority Staff Report – Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations – United States Senate (Oct. 3, 2012) (.pdf), Washington Times, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (1, 2, 3), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Huffington Post (1, 2), The Atlantic, Wikipedia.
Kudos to Elaine M. for steering one of the Huffington Post articles my way.
This column is dedicated to my friend Brian Jones, a stalwart defender of the weak, a good friend, a good brother, a good son, a good father and a good man. Fighting the good fight in any arena is something I will always associate with you. I’ll never forget you standing up for the disabled kids in gym class in high school. Fight on, brother! We love you in my house. Peace.
~Submitted by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
just like the war on drugs, too many jobs are now dependant upon these entities. you will never get rid of them.
Folks, if you would like a laugh of a different kind, I invite you to read the wikipedia article on Bureaucracy and take particular note of the Clean Up comments (typically these have an icon and are enclosed in boxes)
The last one summed it up perfectly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy
Great reporting as we can always expect from your efforts.
Here is another item y’all might find interesting. Before I retired from LE, one of the departments I worked with on occasion set up a program with a Navy law enforcement service database where information on criminals was mutually shared between the various local and state agencies of most of the western states. I wish I could off the cuff remember the name of this but it is escaping me presently.
The tool was web based and managed by this Navy agency. It grepped through public records of arrests and convictions and was even tied into local LE agencys’ databases. It had many features such as info on car license plates, associations between certain individuals, and LKAs for fugitives and the likes.
I mostly used it to track down cold case fugitives who I suspected fled to other counties/states or to get associates of these people to help in their apprehension. Since I was probably the most active deputy in the county for tracking down arrest warrants, it served me quite well.
But mostly from the beginning I began to worry about this system in aiding local LE agencies, (which typically do not have access to each others’ local persons files) was in actuality a pretext for the military to obtain information on particular citizens, in violation of the spirit of prior decades’ bright lines between military and civilian perviews. I found it rather hard to fathom the US Navy would have an interest in Rural Eastern Washington’s car prowlers and meth maggots. The only legitimate interest was limited to the LORAN-C station the Coast Guard ran outside of George, but the effort was certainly there to get as many LE agencies as possible.
I suppose if the FBI ran this it would be less of a concern, but then again what would it really matter. The feds will do whatever they want with it, and come up with the cover for it later.
Fusion confusion
October 8, 2012
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-fusion-1008-20121008,0,2591498.story
Excerpt:
Last year, Illinois officials in a regional intelligence-gathering office known as a fusion center alerted federal authorities of a major cyber attack in Springfield. The officials said that a computer hacker in Russia had remotely invaded a local water district’s computer control system and sent commands to burn out a water pump.
Sound preposterous? It was. The “intrusion” turned out to be a legitimate remote log-on from an employee working while on a family vacation…
Instead of focusing on counterterrorism, many of the nation’s 70 fusion centers have become clearinghouses for collecting and distributing criminal intelligence, even of the most mundane kind. In 2010, for instance, the Tribune reported that one Maryland fusion center helped police collar thieves in a truck loaded with stolen plastic pallets, the kind used in bakeries and groceries. We’re all for fighting local crime, but that wasn’t supposed to be the reason DHS flushed as much as $1.4 billion into fusion centers over the past several years.
Investigators found that these centers are adept at one thing: Spending on cool stuff that does little to advance the anti-terror mission — including sport utility vehicles, large-screen televisions, $6,000 laptops and surveillance gadgets. An Arizona fusion center spent some $45,000 on an fully-loaded SUV that a city official commandeered for commuting.
wonder how many ows protesters are now on the no fly list?
at this point i don’t believe we have a snowcones chance in michigan of getting rid of the fusion centers.
rafflaw,
Here’s another example of DHS money being put to good use. I wrote the post last December.
Dateline Michigan: Your Tax Dollars at Work Fighting Terrorism…with Snow Cones!
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/12/25/dateline-michigan-your-tax-dollars-at-work-fighting-terrorism-with-snow-cones/
Don’t you love it when you find out that your tax dollars are actually being put to good use? I felt great when I heard that the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission (WMSRDC)—a federal- and state-designated agency that is responsible for managing and administrating the homeland security program in Montcalm County and 12 other counties—recently purchased 13 snow cone machines at a cost of $11,700 and transferred them to the counties. There is nothing like an Arctic Blast Sno-Cone machine to stop a terrorist in Michigan dead in his tracks—or to foil a terrorist plot in that state, doncha know?
Still, some officials in Michigan are being asked to explain the purchase of the machines, which were funded by a grant from the Michigan Homeland Security Program. Only one county requested a machine—but all 13 counties received them. It’s good to know that DHS was thinking of the safety of all the counties and not just the one that had the wisdom to request an ice-shaving machine.
Well, members of the Montcalm County Board of Commissioners wondered why the county needed a snow cone machine. They wanted to know the justification for its purchase. According to an article in The Daily News, “The Michigan Homeland Security Grant Program’s Allowable Cost Justification document, dated May 9, 2011, says the snow cone machines can make ice to prevent heat-related illnesses during emergencies, treat injuries and provide snow cones as an outreach at promotional events.”
So you see—the request was not a frivolous one. Not like the request one county had made for a popcorn machine—which was denied.
WMSRDC Executive Director Sandeep Dey said “the snow cone machine request would not have been granted by itself, but was approved because it came with other homeland security equipment.” He added, “It is used to attract people so they can be educated and prepared for homeland security. More importantly, they (homeland security officials) felt in a medical emergency the machine was capable of making ice packs which could be used for medical purposes.”
There you have it—your tax dollars at work protecting the citizens of Michigan with snow cone machines. What a totally cool idea!
This is only slightly OT. NYPD is arresting veterans in a public place who are reading the names of the war dead. One vet arrested was 85 years old. They are targeting livestreamers also. There is nothing on the MSM about it that I have been able to find. As somebody wrote, “the revolution is being twitterized.” Also livestreamed on Ustream.
Blogger JPMassar has the story on Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/07/1141486/-Breaking-NYPD-Arrests-Veterans-Reading-the-Names-of-Afghan-War-Dead
Gene,
Great presentation of information, but why am I not shocked? As Elaine said, establishing DHS was a bad idea. Especially under the clowns in the Bush administration. With the technology available to us today this was an inevitable result of the moronic thinking that created a War on Terror and continues it today in the false belief they’re being patriots. It is treasonous, if you take the perspective that by violating our Constitution they are violating our nation. As you point out so well with your examples, their incompetence doing their unconstitutional job is laughably ironic, though with a bitter comedic dysfunction.
Elaine,
I am thinking 200 tons, at least!
rafflaw,
Two tons of cheese steaks?
Gene,
I had forgotten about Top Secret America by Dana Priest and William Arkin until I read your post.
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
**********
Here’s an excerpt from and link to one of their reports:
A hidden world, growing beyond control
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
Excerpt:
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
The investigation’s other findings include:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.
Elaine,
I wonder where he Philly money went?
Gene,
They sound more like Con-fusion Centers.
I thought establishing the DHS was a dumb idea. We already had enough agencies collecting information…didn’t we?
*****
“A Bunch of Crap”–Senate Report Slams DHS Terrorism Centers
“[The] 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.
By Laura Gottesdiener
October 3, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/bunch-crap-senate-report-slams-dhs-terrorism-centers
Excerpt:
The chapter headings of the 141-page report read like a laundry list of a good idea gone haywire. Topics include the fact that “Reporting from Fusion Centers was Often Flawed, Unrelated to Terrorism,” that “DHS Does Not Know How Much It Has Spent to Support Fusion Centers,” and that “Some DHS-Recognized Fusion Centers Do Not Exist.”
The report includes some shocking examples of misspent taxpayer money, which DHS is still trying to uncover. Unsurprisingly, Arizona led the charge in abusing federal funds, diverting the grants intended to enhance the state’s Counter Terrorism Information Center to instead buy two fully outfitted Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs, pimped out with “lights, flashers, a siren and public address microphone, an anti-theft device, a notebook holder, computer mount, [and] an external cup holder…”
In Cleveland, Ohio, the federal DHS money went toward buying specialized computers for the county medical examiner’s office. According to the report, “when asked how the purchase of the computers would benefit the fusion center and could be portrayed as a fusion center expenditure, the official said he assumed that in the aftermath of a mass casualty event, information about the human remains would have “intelligence value.” He said he did not know whether the laptops were able to connect and securely transmit information to the fusion center.” Meanwhile, a DHS assessment of the Cleveland fusion center in 2010 concluded that it was “all but completely incapable of functioning as a fusion center.” But don’t worry, because the county medical examiner’s office is now all hooked up–thanks to the terrified-of-terrorism U.S. taxpayers.
Most “puzzling” to the report, is the supposed DHS fusion center in Philadelphia, which has received millions of dollars in federal grants, but, as of August 2012, still does not exist.
Gene,
At some point, all that information is going to run into a confluence of Moore’s Law, Murphy’s Law, and Parkinson’s Law. Then the Law of Unintended Consequences will come into play.
The PATRIOT Act the NDAA, NAFTA, GATT, the TSA should all go away. The new TPP which hasn’t yet been passed needs to be stopped before it is.
Another $1.4 billion toilet seat that doesn’t work.
When they have the information, it will be in such volume they will have almost no chance of processing it all. And then the bumblers will not know what to do with it.
When Dušan “Duško” Popov, the “real” James Bond, got an appointment with J. Edgar Hoover and laid out for him the plans for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hoover threw Popov out of his office. Then sixty years later, the plans for the attack on the World Trade Center was given directly to the President and the Defense Department. Their reaction was exactly the same as Hoover’s. Human nature does not change. Only our sense of not having any real privacy changes. There will be future attacks on centers of civilization, and they will come with ample warnings that will go unheeded.
The Privacy Act includes “The following sections originally were part of P.L. 100-503, the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988; they may be found at § 552a (note)….
Sec. 9 Rules of Construction.
Nothing in the amendments made by this Act shall be construed to authorize–
(1) the establishment or maintenance by any agency of a national data bank that combines, merges, or links information on individuals maintained in systems of records by other Federal agencies;
(2) the direct linking of computerized systems of records maintained by Federal agencies;
(3) the computer matching of records not otherwise authorized by law;
Gene,
Sorry about Brian.
It sounds like the best we can hope for is that, although the fusion centers could develop scary amounts of intelligence on US citizens even by just aggregating legally available data, they rarely if ever do so due to incompetence and their main effect is just to siphon time and money which is supposed to be going to prevent terrorism. I guess if you’re going to have Big Brother, you would prefer a bumbling idiot to a mastermind, right?
Still… it would be nice not to have Big Brother at all.
Great job Gene. It is evident that the Patriot Act was the beginning of a very dark chapter in our privacy rights. Gutting it will be a tough job politically.