(Updated: Originally posted January 1, 2007)
It's already here, but you can't really see it yet.
But don't worry, you'll be seeing more of it.
All for a FALSE THREAT!
Helloooo, government!
:-)
"Localities Operate Intelligence Centers To Pool Terror Data; 'Fusion' Facilities Raise Privacy Worries As Wide Range of Information Is Collected" by Mary Beth Sheridan and Spencer S. Hsu Washington Post | December 31, 2006
Frustrated by poor federal cooperation, U.S. states and cities are building their own network of intelligence centers led by police to help detect and disrupt terrorist plots.
The new "fusion centers" are now operating in 37 states, including Virginia and Maryland, and another covers the Washington area, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The centers, which have received $380 million in federal support since the 2001 terrorist attacks, pool and analyze information from local, state and federal law enforcement officials.
The emerging "network of networks" marks a new era of opportunity for law enforcement, according to U.S. officials and homeland security experts. Police are hungry for federal intelligence in an age of homegrown terrorism and more sophisticated crime. For their part, federal law enforcement officials could benefit from a potential army of tipsters -- the 700,000 local and state police officers across the country, as well as private security guards and others being courted by the centers.
Is this America?
Is this TOTALITARIANISM?
Is this Communist China?
Is this Russia?
Is this 1930's Germany?!
NO!
This is AmeriKa!!!!!!
But the emerging model of "intelligence-led policing" faces risks on all sides. The centers are popping up with little federal leadership and training, raising fears of overzealousness such as that associated with police "red squads" that spied on civil rights and peace activists decades ago. The centers also face practical obstacles that could limit their effectiveness, including a shortage of money, skilled analysts, and proven relationships with the FBI and Homeland Security.
Still, the centers are emerging as a key element in a sometimes chaotic new domestic intelligence infrastructure, which also includes homeland security units in local police forces and 103 FBI-led terrorism task forces, triple the number that existed before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Are you not pleased with the BLANKET of PROTECTION/FASCISM that you are being covered with by your loving, paternalistic government, 'Murkns?
Fusion centers are becoming part of the landscape for local government. Police are navigating a new patchwork of state and federal privacy laws that govern the sharing, collection and storage of information.
Traditionally, police had little to do with counterterrorism. But after the 2001 attacks, it became obvious that al-Qaeda members had been preparing not only in far-off Afghan training camps but also in places such as a Gold's Gym in Greenbelt and flight schools in Florida. An unwitting Maryland state trooper stopped one of the future hijackers for speeding on Interstate 95.
Oh yeah, it "became obvious" after 9/11 that "Al-CIA-Duh" members" blah-blah-blah.
What is obvious -- and what the MSM will never discuss -- is that 9/11 was obviously an INSIDE JOB!
How did "Al-CIA-Duh" get THREE WTC buildings (one of which was NOT hit by a plane) to collapse at FREE-FALL SPEED right into their OWN FOOTPRINTS?
How did "Al-CIA-Duh" get NORAD to stand down that day?
What war games were being directed by Dick Cheney from the White House bunker that day?
How did "Al-CIA-Duh" get Christy Whitman and Condi Rice to sign off on telling the public Ground Zero was safe to return to, poisoning the very people they are charged with PROTECTING?
Virginia State Police Sgt. Lee Miller, who oversees the state's year-old fusion center in Richmond:
"Police officers, deputies and troopers . . . they're going to be the ones that encounter a lot of these [suspicious] things on the road. What we're trying to do is provide them the information they need to identify these different things."
It would not matter, Sgt. Miller.
The Pentagon would follow and watch the patsies, and the FBI would just block the investigation anyway.
Cathy Lanier, the incoming D.C. police chief, warned:
"We're in a very precarious position right now. If we lose community support, that is going to be a big deal for local law enforcement."
The fusion centers range from small conference facilities to high-tech nerve centers with expensive communications networks. Some do investigations, while others focus on information-sharing -- passing tips to the FBI and scanning federal intelligence for developments of interest to local departments. Some have explored the use of controversial data-mining software in keeping with their respective state laws.
Maryland's three-year-old fusion center outside Baltimore offers a glimpse of the new intelligence world. Hidden behind a bolted door with no nameplate in a quiet office park, the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center houses members of 23 local, state and federal agencies....
An incident on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in 2004 shows the center's effectiveness. State transportation police stopped an SUV after a veiled passenger was seen videotaping the bridge in a suspicious manner. The officers called the fusion center, which discovered that the driver was an unindicted co-conspirator in a Chicago case involving Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.... an assistant US who helps oversee the center contacted a prosecutor in Chicago, who quickly obtained an arrest warrant for the driver as a material witness in the Hamas case.
But the driver, Ismail Elbarasse, a U.S. citizen of Palestinian origin living in Annandale, was quickly released on bond, and the material-witness warrant eventually expired. He was not charged with a crime. His family said the veiled woman, Elbarasse's wife, was simply taping the bay while returning from the beach.
Civil liberties advocates worry that the fledgling fusion centers could stray into monitoring people engaged in lawful activities, as some members of new police homeland security units have done.
I'm starting to get a chill! You see that?
"A glimpse of the new intelligence world, hidden behind a bolted door with no nameplate in a quiet office park."
SCARY!!
And did you get the "incident [that] shows the center's effectiveness?"
They had to "quickly release on bond, and... warrant expired. He was not charged with a crime.... The veiled woman, Elbarasse's wife, was simply taping the bay while returning from the beach."
Yup, it's ALL SUSPICIOUS in fascista AmeriKa!
A Georgia homeland security officer, for example, was discovered photographing a protest by vegans at a HoneyBaked Ham store in 2003. Privacy advocates are also concerned about the vast amount of information some fusion centers collect -- and the sometimes vague limits on its use and storage.
John L. Buchanan, Phoenix assistant police chief:
"In Phoenix, we're talking about something like 250,000 police reports a year: names, addresses, contact information, business cards, tickets, all the kinds of information that is gathered and that can be of tremendous value at a national analytical level; however, we've really got to be cognizant of the risk [of abuse]."
Oh my 'effin' God! VEGAN TERRORISTS!!!
Why? Because they don't want to kill animals?
There is your abuse, right there!
"Fusion center" is a military coinage embraced by civilian homeland security authorities after Sept. 11, 2001. Federal officials emphasize that the centers will be led from the grass roots.
Charles E. Allen, chief intelligence officer for the Homeland Security Department, said the centers will be "all hazards, all crime, all threats," targeted not just at terrorism but also at transnational gangs, immigrant smuggling and other threats.
Thomas E. McNamara, ISE manager under the director of national intelligence, said the centers will be state-driven and "primarily analytical." U.S. officials are vowing to speed background checks and to send Homeland Security intelligence officers to work at 18 state and local fusion centers in 2007 and 35 by 2008.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, would go further. He proposed a new law enforcement assistance program to make intelligence-led policing the 21st-century version of community-oriented policing."
Yeah, thanks for buying into the fascism, DemocraP!
So which side you lining up on, government monitor?
With the Constitution and Democracy, or with these fascist fucks who have seized the nation?
What's it gonna be?
