What's wrong with Fusion Centers

If the federal government announced it was creating a new domestic intelligence agency made up of over 800,000 operatives dispersed throughout every American city and town, filing reports on even themost common everyday behaviors, Americans would revolt. Yet this is exactly what the Bush administrationis trying to do with its little-noticed National Strategy for Information Sharing, which establishes state, local and regional “fusion centers” as a primary mechanism for the collection and disseminationof domestic intelligence.1In November 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a report entitled “What’s Wrong with Fusion Centers.”2 Extrapolating from a few troublesome incidents and comments made by state andfederal officials, and mindful of the nation’s long history of abuse with regard to domestic “intelligence”gathering at all levels of government, we warned about the potential dangers of these rising new institutions.We pointed out that, while diverse and often still in the early stages of formation, they oftenseem to be characterized by ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sectorand military participation, and an apparent bent toward suspicionless information collection and datamining. We urged policymakers to examine this incipient network of institutions closely and, at a minimum,to put rigorous safeguards in place to ensure that fusion centers would not become the meansfor another wave of such abuses.In the six months since our report, new press accounts have borne out many of our warnings. In justthat short time, news accounts have reported overzealous intelligence gathering, the expansion ofuncontrolled access to data on innocent people, hostility to open government laws, abusive entanglementsbetween security agencies and the private sector, and lax protections for personally identifiable information.Overall, it is becoming increasingly clear that fusion centers are part of a new domestic intelligence apparatus. The elements of this nascent domestic surveillance system include:• Watching and recording the everyday activities of an ever-growing list of individuals• Channeling the flow of the resulting reports into a centralized security agency• Sifting through (“data mining”) these reports and databases with computers to identify individualsfor closer scrutinySuch a system, if allowed to permeate our society, would be nothing less than the creation of a total surveillancesociety.Recent reports have confirmed each of these elements.MONITORING EVERYDAY BEHAVIORIn April 2008, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times both reported on a new Los AngelesPolice Department order that compels LAPD officers to begin reporting “suspicious behaviors” in additionto their other duties—creating a stream of “intelligence” about a host of everyday activities that,according to documents, will be fed to the local fusion center.3FUSION CENTER UPDATE 1FUSION CENTER UPDATE