Quality, Not Quantity (Unless You’re a Fusion Center, Spending Taxpayer Money)

The GAO found criminal and anti-terrorism centers sometimes conducted overlapping activities, and the federal government does not hold the entities accountable for coordinating their efforts, and preventing duplication or overlap of information-sharing efforts.

Who pays for government surveillance? Taxpayers. And we should all heed the age-old message: buyer beware. Fusion centers are an excellent example of why. The point of fusion centers is to enable intelligence sharing between local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal agencies. But because they involve actors from various jurisdictions and agencies, the price is a lack of clarity around lines of responsibility and accountability. Fusion centers have been criticized by Congress for wasting taxpayer dollars on “’intelligence’ of uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.” But because of the way they are organized, it’s unclear who is responsible for these problems. That’s why fusion centers deserve additional public scrutiny and reform.

Information-sharing is a vital component of national security, but that is not an excuse to waste taxpayer funds. GAO found a whopping 91 instances of overlap between different criminal and anti-terror information-sharing programs, including state and local fusion centers supported by the Department of Homeland Security. Clearly, government agencies are not coordinating their efforts to secure our nation.

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a reply to: N3k9Ni

The point of fusion centers is to enable intelligence sharing between local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal agencies.

Gathering all the data in a central place for all agencies to review, at any time, for any perceived reason. This post I am making is in there, too.

Heres a look at one of those facilities in Utah. Watch the video in the link, unusual for FOX news. I guess they got miffed by the rep who blatantly lied and the subsequent visit from the EFF_BEE_EYE for overflying the "Data Center".

"It's in secret so you don't really know," Drake explained. "It's benign, right. If I haven't -- and if I haven't done anything wrong it doesn't matter. The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That's George Orwell. That's 1984. That's what that would look like."

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That's one massive data storage facility, its a wonder to me why Americans haven't taken it down themselves......
For a Freedom loving people, Americans seem to be sleepwalking into totalitarianism rapidly.....

Pfft. Amateurs.

The DIA and SOCOM started one of the first data mining projects. They went together so they could share the cost. And once they got it going, every separate branch had to have one. So it became a turn-key item you could buy from [redacted], complete with operations staff.

And then JSOC got one, then Combat Applications, then Special Warfare Command, then the FBI and now the damned things are all over the country.

Why you need more than one is beyond me.