{"id":16429,"date":"2012-10-15T14:44:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T13:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=16429"},"modified":"2012-10-15T14:44:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T13:44:59","slug":"how-youre-paying-to-be-secretly-monitored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/how-youre-paying-to-be-secretly-monitored\/","title":{"rendered":"How you’re paying to be secretly monitored"},"content":{"rendered":"

GREGORY PATIN, Examiner<\/a> |<\/p>\n

The U.S. government has spent\u00a0up to $1.4 billion of taxpayer money<\/a>\u00a0since 2003 to create \u201cthreat fusion centers\u201d under the guise of fighting\u00a0terrorism. Yet a two-year\u00a0bipartisan report<\/a>\u00a0recently released by the\u00a0U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations\u00a0has found that these \u201cfusion centers,\u201d operating under the control of the Department of\u00a0Homeland Security\u00a0(DHS) in efforts to engage national, state and local intelligence, have not yielded any useful information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts.<\/p>\n

Most people who rely on print and TV news probably have never heard of\u00a0fusion centers<\/a>. There are as many as 72 of these facilities. 50 state-based and 22 urban centers were set up during the Bush presidency in cooperation between the DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ).<\/p>\n

Fusion centers contain large data warehouses that collect information from all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, the military, state and local police agencies, as well as privately owned corporations and organizations. That information includes the cell phone data and emails of every American citizen. There is one of these facilities in Madison near the Dane county regional airport, at 2445 Darwin Road. (See slideshow or view an\u00a0interactive map of their locations here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)<\/a>, the DHS described its fusion centers as “one of the centerpieces of [its] counterterrorism strategy” and its database was supposed to be a central repository of known or “appropriately suspected” terrorists. In theory, local law enforcement officers, in conjunction with DHS officials, conduct\u00a0surveillance\u00a0and write up a report known as a Homeland Intelligence Report (HIR) for the DHS to review. If credible, the DHS would then spread the information to the larger intelligence community.<\/p>\n

The Senate report<\/a>, however, found that the fusion centers failed to uncover a single terrorist threat and only gathered information that is used for ordinary criminal investigations that local law enforcement agencies are well-capable of doing. Even DHS officials told the panel the fusion centers produce \u201cpredominantly useless information\u201d and \u201ca bunch of crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five centers the Senate studied spent their federal terrorism grant money on \u201chidden \u2018shirt button\u2019 cameras,\u201d cell phone tracking systems and other surveillance tools. They also spent taxpayer money on things like \u201cdozens of flat-screen TVs\u201d and SUVs, sometimes claiming that Chevrolet Tahoes were intended to help \u201crespond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here a few more details of what\u00a0the Senate report<\/a>\u00a0reveals:<\/p>\n