Criminalizing Political Dissent ~ or, WTF is a "Fusion Center" and why should you care?

Gogol Bordello
Think Locally, Fuck Globally

Profiling and Criminalizing Political Dissent
by William F. Jasper

A recent report issued through the Missouri State Highway Patrol is stirring alarm among citizens and some elected officials that Christians, political conservatives, and opponents of unconstitutional government action are being targeted for intimidation and harassment — or worse.

The drafters of the report clearly are attempting to create in the minds of law-enforcement personnel an association between violent “right-wing extremists” and the millions of law-abiding Americans who oppose gun control, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve System, the income tax, illegal immigration, and abortion.

The eight-page report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” and dated February 20 also specifically mentions by name Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who ran for president in the 2008 Republican Party primaries, and third-party candidates Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. The clear implication is that people sporting bumper stickers or literature related to these candidates should be viewed as potential threats that view all law enforcement as “the enemy.”

After listing 18 incidents of “noteworthy militia activity” from 1995 through 2008, some of which involved bombings or armed confrontations with law enforcement, the report states:

You are the Enemy: The militia subscribes to an antigovernment and NWO [New World Order] mind set, which creates a threat to law enforcement officers. They view the military, National Guard, and law enforcement as a force that will confiscate their firearms and place them in FEMA concentration camps. (Bold emphasis in original.)

The report, issued by the Missouri Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), a branch of the state’s Highway Patrol, then states:

Militia members most commonly associate with 3rd party political groups. It is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitutional Party, Campaign for Liberty, or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate [sic]: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.

Chuck Baldwin is the founder and pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, as well as a radio talk-show host and newspaper/Internet columnist. In 2008, he was the Constitution Party’s candidate for president of the United States. In a March 17 response to the MIAC report, he stated:

Do you not see how dangerous this kind of slanderous labeling can become? It could affect your flight status when you try to board an airline. It could affect your application for sensitive jobs. It could affect your adjudication before a court or judge. It could make you a target for aggressive law enforcement strategies. It could affect your being able to obtain a passport. It could affect one's ability to purchase a firearm or receive a State concealed weapon permit.

This is very serious business! We are not talking about private opinions. We are talking about law enforcement agencies. And remember, most law enforcement agencies share these types of reports; therefore, how many other state police agencies have similar reports floating around? Probably several.

Plus, how do we know that this report was not influenced by federal police agencies? We don't. Rest assured, I do not plan to take this lying down. As one who is personally named in the above report, I demand a public retraction and apology from the MIAC and Missouri State Police. I can tell you that my family is extremely distraught that their husband, father, and grandfather would be labeled in such a manner. I am also not ruling out legal action. In addition, I am discussing an appropriate response with Ron Paul and Bob Barr.

Missouri State Representative Jim Guest finds the MIAC report “very disturbing” and has requested a meeting with the agency. “I was rather skeptical at first as to whether it was even a genuine report,” he told The New American. “I thought it could be an Internet hoax.” However, the Highway Patrol soon verified for him that the report was authentic. In a press release/editorial issued March 17, Rep. Guest denounced the report as “profiling to the highest degree to identify citizens of this country who display bumper stickers or other labels as being part of a modern militia movement.”

[SNIP]

ARTICLE SOURCE LINK: THE NEW AMERICAN

Yesterday's Fox News also ran a piece it:

If you're an anti-abortion activist, or if you display political paraphernalia supporting a third-party candidate or a certain Republican member of Congress, if you possess subversive literature, you very well might be a member of a domestic paramilitary group.

snip

During a press conference last week in Kansas City, Mo., DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano called fusion centers the "centerpiece of state, local, federal intelligence-sharing" in the future.

Fusion Center Conference in KC will bring together experts on security and privacy

The 2009 National Fusion Center Conference is sponsored by the National Fusion Center Coordination Group, whose members include representatives from the following agencies:

• U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)


• Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)


• DOJ’s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative


• Federal Bureau of Investigation


• Office of the Director of National Intelligence


• Office of the Program Manager, Information Sharing Environment

Target Audience:

• Fusion center directors and senior leadership


• Homeland security directors


• Officers/Analysts within intelligence units and senior leadership


• Local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement

Napolitano and Nixon explored Missouri's fusion center, which provides information sharing and analysis for local, state and federal law enforcement.

Since it's start in 2005, the fusion center addresses challenges such as natural disasters, gang violence and terrorism. "It connects the federal, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, the state highway patrol and local law enforcement," Secretary Napolitano said. "They get intelligence, get information and we can make sure the effort is focused in the right places. That is what we call the fusion center and that is the future of law enforcement."

CopFest 2009:

"I'm writing like I know what I'm talking about because I attended the first day of the National Fusion Center Conference, going on yesterday, today and tomorrow at the downtown Marriott hotel. Representatives from more than 1,000 agencies were there, including the FBI, the State Department, FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and police and sheriffs departments from coast to coast. I've never seen so many badges, Blackberrys and buzz cuts assembled in one place."

[SNIP]

Part of this year's theme is "Protecting Privacy, Civil Liberties and Civil Rights," an obvious shout-out to members of the media and the ACLU who were invited to watch yesterday's proceedings. At last year's conference in San Francisco, reporters only got to attend a very short, vague discussion. This year, all of Tuesday's "breakout sessions" were open to the media, but today's and Wednesday's sessions are closed.

Why Fusion Centers?

Fusion centers are best equipped to oversee and manage the complex role of information sharing and facilitate cooperation between sometimes competing interests. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) defines a fusion center as "an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by merging data from a variety of sources."

Fusion centers are staffed by multiagency personnel with the technological capabilities to fuse and join millions of records concerning suspicious activities, terrorism and crime found in computer-aided dispatch systems, records management systems (RMS) and records held at regional information sharing systems. With the latest technology, fusion centers can store, search, retrieve and analyze data no matter what form it takes -- whether it's a suspicious activity report, a phone call transcript, a handwritten note or unstructured data, such as e-mail attachments.

Besides effectively sharing intelligence and information among federal, state and local government agencies, fusion centers can also provide real-time threat assessments and situational awareness to enhance the safety and security of critical public and private infrastructure.

The DOJ's Fusion Center Guidelines assert, "Leaders must move forward with a new paradigm on the exchange of information and intelligence." With more than 60 fusion centers firmly established throughout the country, public safety leaders have heeded this directive and established information sharing across agency borders.

The Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative:

As part of the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative's (Global) efforts to develop fusion center guidelines, the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC), in support of the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), recommended the creation of the Fusion Center Focus Group.

This focus group was tasked with recommending guidelines to aid in the development and operation of fusion centers.

Concurrently, the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) Intelligence and Information Sharing Working Group focused on developing guidelines for local and state agencies in relation to the collection, analysis, and dissemination of terrorism-related intelligence in the context of fusion centers. The recommendations resulting from the HSAC's efforts assisted in the development of the fusion center guidelines.

This page lists all of the related terms for Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, organized in order of importance

Remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to the National Fusion Center Conference in Kansas City, Mo. on March 11, 2009:

Fusion Centers are not the same as your Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF). They are different and they have different roles. The JTTF, as those in the audience know, is an FBI-driven group designed to look solely at the issue of terrorism and terrorism dimension. The Fusion Centers are designed to look at many, many more things beyond that. For example, to give you an example, for some Fusion Centers, a serial kidnapper, a gang or organized crime syndicate in an area, a serial or pattern murderer all have been handled by Fusion Centers. They’re not necessarily terrorists. The JTTFs have a very defined specific function, the Fusion Center much broader, and then the Fusion Center also includes capacity for response and recovery. So it becomes a place where, when we think about prevention and planning and consequence management—that you have the right people involved in the Fusion Center to deal with that.

Here she feels compelled to issue a preemptive denial which in my experience usually telegraphs exactly the opposite is about to occur:

Next, contrary to what I think some have presumed and I think really presumed without talking with anyone who’s involved in Fusion Centers, Fusion Centers are not domestic spying agencies and they are not designed to invade the privacy of the American citizen. Know what? We can and we will make sure that we have effective law enforcement in this country while respecting the rights of American citizens and that means the rightest of the rights of American citizens.

Okeedokee then. We'll see.

Listen, everybody. I meant what I said. Fusion Centers to me are going to be key in how we increase our ability to protect the homeland. I think we all recognize that there are no hundred percent guarantees that something untold may happen, despite our best efforts. In that case, Fusion Centers are going to be the key in terms of response, as well.

Virginia: March 24,2008:

To return to the bill that's currently moving through the Virginia state legislature, opponents of HB1007 suspect that the federal government is pushing the state to adopt the measure, which will render all of the Virginia Fusion Center's databases and records exempt from FOIA requests. The bill also proposes to make Fusion Center employees exempt from subpoena in civil actions related to "criminal intelligence information," and it would grant to call-in tipsters immunity to defamation and invasion of privacy claims.

2007: THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS:
FUSION CENTERS
Go to sleep little sheeple, Fusion, good!
Jews, Christians, political conservatives, Paulians, libertarians, gun owners, pro-lifers, Nobamas, Holy Leaf smokers, various & sundry conspiracy kooks and any and all ancillary assorted unclassifiable mixed nut cranks opposing the fall of man and unconstitutional government actions, BAD!

You'll be sorry when they Yokki me!

December 2008:

In a Privacy Impact Assessment released publicly this week, the Department of Homeland Security's Privacy Office outlines the measures in place to ensure that "fusion centers" created to facilitate information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies respect privacy rights. "Despite these efforts," the report concludes, "the Privacy Office has identified a number of risks to privacy presented by the fusion center program."

AUGUST 2008, COLORADO:
Monster fusion center to coordinate DNC intelligence
Questions over potential civil liberties violations raised in wake of 'super fusion' security apparatus

Dig the TITLE this MFer has.... Global Designated Federal Employee!

SUMMARY: This is an announcement of a meeting of DOJ's Global Justice
Information Sharing Initiative (Global) Federal Advisory Committee
(GAC) to discuss the Global Initiative, as described HERE

DATES: The meeting will take place on Thursday, April 23, 2009, from
8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: J. Patrick McCreary, Global Designated Federal Employee (DFE), Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs, 810 7th Street, NW., Washington, DC 20531

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This meeting is open to the public. Due to security measures, however, members of the public who wish to attend this meeting must register with Mr. J. Patrick McCreary at the above address at least seven (7) days in advance of the meeting. Registrations will be accepted on a space available basis. Access to the meeting will not be allowed without registration. All attendees will be required to sign in at the meeting registration desk. Please bring photo identification and allow extra time prior to the meeting. Interested persons whose registrations have been accepted may be permitted to participate in the discussions at the discretion of the meeting chairman and with approval of the DFE.

OK this one is freaking me out, with the fuckin' Glow Ballin' Designated Feds!

Purpose

The GAC will act as the focal point for justice information systems integration activities in order to facilitate the coordination of technical, funding, and legislative strategies in support of the Administration's justice priorities.

The GAC will guide and monitor the development of the

Purpose

The GAC will act as the focal point for justice information systems integration activities in order to facilitate the coordination of technical, funding, and legislative strategies in support of the Administration's justice priorities.

The GAC will guide and monitor the development of the Global information sharing concept. It will advise the Assistant Attorney General, OJP; the Attorney General; the President (through the Attorney General); and local, state, tribal, and federal policymakers in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The GAC will also advocate for strategies for accomplishing a Global information sharing capability.

J. Patrick McCreary,

Global DFE, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs.

. It will advise the Assistant Attorney General, OJP; the Attorney General; the President (through the Attorney General); and local, state, tribal, and federal policymakers in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The GAC will also advocate for strategies for accomplishing a Global information sharing capability.

J. Patrick McCreary,

Global DFE, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Office of Justice Programs.

GOOGLE SEARCH: Global Designated Federal Employee

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