Central hub for Texas police info opens up

Think of it as a central hub allowing law enforcement from across the Lone Star State to fight terror. That's what the new Texas Department of Public Safety Fusion Center will be, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday morning for the new facility got officials of various agencies a step closer to a useful tool in the fight against crime. The idea is to pool intelligence to help prevent terrorist attacks and track organized crime, the like Mexican cartel drug activity. "Every agency has expertise and intelligence analysis. They also have information," said DPS Director Steve McCraw. "By combining that information is the only way you can get an accurate understanding of that threat environment."

Still, critics have called the center a threat to privacy, much like civil liberties groups have protested loudly about the Austin Regional Intelligence Center. The Austin City Council approved using a $150,000 federal grant in August 2009 to run the fusion center, which will allow 10 local law enforcement agencies to share crime information. Critics have said they are worried the information-sharing by law enforcement could lead to personal profiling and undue surveillance. Yet, law enforcement agencies in Travis, Hays and Williamson counties said the goal of the center is to fight organized crime and to track crime trends.

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Inside the Fusion Center

When a tip arrived about a threat of violence at a southern Nevada high school football game, a Clark County School District police officer helped plan a response. When a Colorado man was arrested on terrorism charges, a Department of Homeland Security analyst probed whether he had Las Vegas ties. Though the two cases are very different, the officials who worked them were in the same cubicle-filled room at the Southern Nevada Counterterrorism Center.

Open for more than two years, the Las Vegas "fusion" center is battling terrorism and street crime, a dual mission that has affected how local and federal law enforcement agents view each other and their jobs. The fusion center concept, which was developed by the federal government after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is grounded in the idea that information flow between police agencies is the key to stopping terrorism.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, the concept has evolved to include a broader "all crimes, all hazards" approach. A sign that federal law enforcement has embraced this strategy came last month when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Las Vegas and praised the local fusion center as a national model.

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Fusion Center Privacy and Security Quiz

To help a fusion center director determine their level of lawful operation, Chuck Georgo of nowheretohide.org prepared the following thought-provoking ten question quiz. The quiz is designed to reduce or eliminate criticism of Fusion Centers that have been circulating recently. This quiz is meant to be criterion based, meaning that ALL ten questions must be answered “yes” to pass the test; any “no” answer puts that fusion center at risk for criticism or legal action.

Chuck is suggesting that if a Fusion Center is not practicing appropriate intelligence management then they are not only creating major problems for themselves, but fusion centers in general. They are setting the whole concept up to fail and may be even breaking the law, something they are sworn to uphold. Time then, to pay attention and be appropriately self-critical.

The Quiz

1. Is every fusion center analyst and officer instructed to comply with that fusion center’s documented policy regarding what information can and cannot be collected, stored, and shared with other agencies.
2. Does the fusion center employ a documented process to establish validated requirements for intelligence collection operations, based on documented public safety concerns.
3. Does the fusion center document specific criminal predicate for every piece of intelligence information it collects and retains from open source, confidential informant, or public venues?
4. Is collected intelligence marked to indicate source and content reliability of that information?
5. Is all collected intelligence retained in a centralized system with robust capabilities for enforcing federal, state or municipal intelligence retention policies?
6. Does that same system provide the means to control and document every dissemination of collected intelligence (electronic, voice, paper, fax, etc.)?
7. Does the fusion center regularly review retained intelligence with the purpose of documenting reasons for continued retention or purging of outdated or unnecessary intelligence (as appropriate) per standing retention policies?
8. Does the fusion center director provide hands-on executive oversight of the intelligence review process, to include establishment of approved intelligence retention criteria?
9. Are there formally documented, and enforced consequences for any analyst or officer that violates standing fusion center intelligence collection or dissemination policies?
10. Finally, does the fusion center Director actively promote transparency of its lawful operations to external stakeholders, privacy advocates, and community leaders?

Together, these ten points form a nice set of “Factors for Transparency” that any fusion center director can use to proactively demonstrate to groups like the ACLU that they are operating their fusion center in a lawful and proper manner.

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Homeland Security Sharing Tool Helps Fusion Centers Fight Terror

The Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense (DoD) today announced an initiative to grant select state and major urban area fusion center personnel access to classified terrorism-related information residing in DoD’s classified network.

Under this initiative, select fusion center personnel with a federal security clearance will be able to access specific terrorism-related information resident on the DoD Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet)—a secure network used to send classified data. This classified data will be accessed via DHS’ Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN). DHS will be responsible for ensuring that proper security procedures are followed.

“This initiative reflects the federal government’s strong commitment to improve information sharing with our state, local, and tribal partners,” said DHS Acting Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Bart R. Johnson. “Fusion centers are a critical part of our national security enterprise, and this new tool enables federal agencies to share information with these partners while utilizing our advanced technical capabilities for secure information sharing.”

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Fusion Centers: Giving cops too much information?

At the time, it seemed one of the unanimous lessons of the tragedy of Sept. 11 — law enforcement agencies at all levels of government have to do a better job of sharing information with each other in order to prevent terror plots. Making that actually happen, of course, is easier said than done, which is why newfangled, multi-organizational agencies were set up to promote cooperation and overcome turf battles. But now critics claim that these so-called fusion centers are making it all too easy for government to collect and share data from numerous public databases.

Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are pushing bills to restrict fusion centers' access to data, most notably in New Mexico, where opponents hope to make government snooping a costly offense. Legislation has been introduced in Santa Fe that would prohibit any New Mexico law enforcement agency from collecting information about the religious, political and social associations of law-abiding New Mexicans. And in what would be a first for the nation, the bill would allow private citizens to sue law enforcement agencies for damages over the unauthorized collection of such data.

Privacy advocates point to a scandal in the state of Maryland, where last summer it was revealed that in 2005 and 2006 undercover members of the Maryland State Police had carried out surveillance of war protesters and death penalty opponents. Some of the intelligence gathered on the subjects, according to logs obtained by the ACLU last summer, may have found its way into databases shared with local, national and federal agencies through the state's fusion center. An investigation found the data collection represented a serious lapse in judgment, but the victims had little recourse, except public outrage.

"The lack of proper legal limits on the new fusion centers not only threatens to undermine fundamental American values, but also threatens to turn them into wasteful and misdirected bureaucracies that, like our federal security agencies before 9/11, won't succeed in their ultimate mission of stopping terrorism and other crime," the national ACLU notes in its report on the centers.

Comment:

• This kind of news gives me heartburn. Like doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and electricians, the vast majority of law enforcement analysts are motivated, trained and ethical professionals. Like these other groups, they occasionally make mistakes, but that's all it is, an occasional mistake!
• I have visited a number of fusion centers and know many analysts that work in them. They do a tremendous job. The country is much safer because of their efforts.
  
• Critics of fusion centers generally have no real idea what it is that they actually do and the hoops that analysts have to jump through to get products created, checked and disseminated. These same critics have their own agendas and the truth can be a casualty.
  
• Fusion centers must comply with regulations, and although a formal code of ethics has not been drawn up, they follow very high standards.
• The times that mistakes are made, it is when the guidelines have not been followed properly. If analysts and their managers would ensure they are followed, and have standard operating procedures in place, then these mistakes will dry up along with the criticism. Intelligence professionals must stick to the rules just like anyone else.

Source:

• "Fusion Centers: Giving Cops too much information?", Time, 3/9/09.
  

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