If ANY U.S. citizen recently (like yesterday) had a teeny shred of a
hope that a shred of his or her personal information was safe from the
BUSH "GOVERNMENT'S" prying, spying criminals, the jig's up, as they
say.
"FUSION CENTERS," which your own state maintains to enable the Bu****es
to keep tabs on your most trifling activity, are the all the rage in
America's "intelligence" community.
And, I don't know about YOU, but for perhaps the first time since Bush
came on board, I'm REALLY CONCERNED! (I've always been disgusted.)
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"Centers Tap Into Personal Databases"
"State Groups Were Formed After 9/11"
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Wa****ngton Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; A01
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to
personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted
cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver's license photographs and
credit re****ts, according to a document obtained by The Wa****ngton
Post.
One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the
document shows, though it's not clear what information those systems
contain.
Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats
and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law
enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or
fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information
to other agencies. They are expected to play im****tant roles in
national information-sharing networks that link local, state and
federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their
storehouses of records for patterns and clues.
Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers'
im****tance to national security, they have generally declined to
elaborate on the centers' activities. But a document that lists
resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the
organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on
access to commercial and government databases than had previously been
disclosed.
Those details have come to light at a time of debate about domestic
intelligence efforts, including eavesdropping and data-aggregation
programs at the National Security Agency, and whether the government
has enough protections in place to prevent abuses.
The list of information resources was part of a survey conducted last
year, officials familiar with the effort said. It shows that, like
most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private
information-broker services that keep records about Americans'
locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms
licenses and the like.
Centers serving New York and other states also tap into a Federal
Trade Commission database with information about hundreds of thousands
of identity-theft re****ts, the document and police interviews show.
Pennsylvania buys credit re****ts and uses face-recognition software to
examine driver's license photos, while analysts in Rhode Island have
access to car-rental databases. In Maryland, authorities rely on a
little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains
12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans.
In its online promotional material, Entersect calls itself "the silent
partner to municipal, county, state, and federal justice agencies who
access our databases every day to locate subjects, develop background
information, secure information from a cellular or unlisted number,
and much more."
Police officials said fusion center analysts are trained to use the
information responsibly, legally and only on authorized criminal and
counterterrorism cases. They stressed the im****tance of secret and
public data in rooting out obscure threats.
"There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism"
said Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode
Island State Police. "That's what post-9/11 is about."
Government watchdogs, along with some police and intelligence
officials, said they worry that the fusion centers do not have enough
oversight and are not open enough with the public, in part because
they operate under various state rules.
"Fusion centers have grown, really, off the radar screen of public
accountability," said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at
the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group
in the District. "Congress and the state legislatures need to get a
handle over what is going on at all these fusion centers."
Fusion centers were formed in the wake of revelations that
counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities missed or neglected
evidence that the Sept. 11 attackers were in the United States while
preparing to strike.
Because they are organized by the states, the centers have developed
in different ways. Some are small operations focused on crime, while
others are full-fledged criminal and counterterrorism operations. From
2004 to 2007, state and local governments received $254 million from
the Department of Homeland Security in sup****t of the centers, which
are also sup****ted by employees of the FBI and other federal law
enforcement agencies. In some cases, they work with the U.S. Northern
Command, the Pentagon operation involved in homeland security.
The centers have been criticized for being secretive, but authorities
said that this is largely for security reasons. Activists want to know
more about their activities, the kinds of information they collect and
how the information is being used.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit in Virginia
last month seeking the release of records about communication among
state fusion center officials and the departments of Homeland Security
and Justice. Marc Rotenberg, the privacy center's executive director,
said his group was responding to a proposed state law that would
sharply limit access to records about the fusion centers' activity.
Sue Reingold, deputy program manager in the Information Sharing
Environment office, a federal operation with a mandate to improve
information sharing, said state and local officials "must have access
to a broad array of classified and unclassified information" to
perform their mission. But Reingold said that an "im****tant part of
this is appropriate training and oversight that is well understood and
transparent to the public."
"Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime,
including terrorism," she said.
The list includes a wide variety of data resources along with software
that finds patterns and displays links among people.
Most of the centers have subscriptions to Accurint, ChoicePoint's
Autotrack or LexisNexis. These information brokers are Web-based
services that deliver instant access to billions of records on
individuals' homes, cars, phone numbers and other information.
Some of the centers link to records of currency transactions and
almost 5 million suspicious-activity re****ts filed by financial
institutions with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes
Enforcement Network.
Massachusetts and other states rely on LocatePlus, an information
broker that claims that it provides "the most comprehensive cell
phone, unlisted and unpublished phone database in the industry." The
state also taps a private system called ClaimSearch that includes a
"nationwide database that provides information on insurance claims,
including vehicles, casualty claims and property claims," the document
said.
The center in Ohio has access, through authorized users, to an FBI
"secret level repository," the document said.
Rhode Island re****ted that it has access, also through the FBI, to
"Top Secret resources" such as "Proton, which allows queries of CIA
databases," the document shows. Officials at the Rhode Island State
Police, FBI and CIA declined to discuss the system and the kinds of
information it contains.
In addition to databases run by Entersect, Maryland fusion center
analysts have access to wage and property records, cor****ate charters,
utility records and a host of government files, including criminal
justice information and traffic tickets. Jason Luckenbaugh, the
center's chief of staff, acknowledged concern about the government's
ability to tap into new sources of information. But he said the
databases enable analysts to fight crime and protect against
terrorism, and help local authorities do the same. "We're not trying
to threaten them in any way," he said.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040103049.html
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