Department of Homeland Security and Fusion Centers, an Unfused Network

Decentralized organizational approaches to security provision introduce new challenges for controlling information-sharing practices, safeguarding civil liberties, and ensuring accountability. Department of Homeland Security “fusion centers,” and the multiple organizations and databases that are part of fusion centers, engender an environment in which information is migrating beyond original purposes of counterterrorism. Indeed, based on intensive qualitative research, the authors have found that fusion centers that were originally oriented toward “counterterrorism” have quickly broadened their scope to include all crimes, and those that began as “all crimes” have migrated only marginally to terrorism. This is the result of three quite predictable factors: fusion centers have to be valuable to their states, there is too little activity that is clearly terrorism related, and fusion center personnel have to use their time and skills constructively. Nonetheless, even if local policing needs are met through fusion-center funding and support, many of the activities of fusion-center analysts lend themselves to mission creep and violations of civil liberties.

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Surveillance and Public Space

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.145 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Rachel Hall

Keyword(s):

Science Fiction ◽

Public Space ◽

Homeland Security ◽

The United States ◽

Consumer Market ◽

Department Of Homeland Security ◽

Ethical Problems ◽

Fusion Centers ◽

Peer Monitoring ◽

Monitoring Applications

Current communications research takes up the political and ethical problems posed by new surveillance technologies in public space, ranging from biometric technologies adopted by state security apparatuses to self- and peer-monitoring applications for the consumer market. In addition to studies that examine new surveillance technologies, scholars are tracking intensive and extensive expansions of surveillance in the name of risk management. Much of the scholarship produced in the last 15 years looks at how the establishment and expansion of the Department of Homeland Security within the United States and its international counterparts have dramatically altered security, military, and legal practices and cultures. Within this context what were once science fiction dystopias have become funded research and development projects and institutionalized practices aimed at remote data collection and processing, including facial recognition technology and a variety of remote sensing devices. Private-public partnerships between companies like Google and Homeland Security fusion centers have made it possible to use GPS technology to network data that promises to help manage a variety of natural and man-made disasters.

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The Rise of the Fusion-Intelligence Complex: A critique of political surveillance after 9/11

Surveillance & Society ◽

10.24908/ss.v8i1.3473 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 43-60 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Anthony Bolton Newkirk

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Social History ◽

Homeland Security ◽

Civil Liberties ◽

The United States ◽

Special Focus ◽

Department Of Homeland Security ◽

Fusion Centers ◽

State Surveillance ◽

Private Sector Organizations

This paper argues that 'fusion centers' are byproducts of the privatization of state surveillance and assaults on civil liberties, at least in the United States, the nation on which the research is based, with special focus on the recent case of the Maryland State Police spying scandal. In fusion centers, members of local, state, and federal police and intelligence units, as well as private-sector organizations, share information with each other by means of computerized technology and store it in databases. While the official purpose is to protect public safety, the practice of 'data-mining' and unclear lines of authority lead to fusion centers being unaccountable to the public and, hence, a threat to the democratic process. These conditions are encapsulated in the case of official espionage in the state of Maryland at least between 2004 and 2006. Drawing on official documents, the history of 'homeland security' since World War II and the characteristics of fusion centers, the Department of Homeland Security, and events in Maryland are surveyed. Working within the contexts of social history, surveillance theory, and political economy, this paper is grounded in the work of Beck, Churchill and Wall, Donner, Fuchs, Graham, Lyon, McCulloch and Pickering, and Monahan.

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Fixing a Failure to Identify Intelligence in the Domestic Setting: Aligning Collection and Analysis to Address an All-Hazards Mission

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management ◽

10.1515/jhsem-2014-0102 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Darren E. Tromblay

Keyword(s):

Homeland Security ◽

Interagency Collaboration ◽

Government Agencies ◽

Federal Bureau ◽

Department Of Homeland Security ◽

Fusion Centers ◽

Task Forces ◽

The Us ◽

State And Local ◽

Domestic Setting

AbstractThe US’ domestically-oriented, homeland security enterprise lacks a structure that facilitates an all-hazards intelligence mission. An all-hazards mission must account for both positive and negative intelligence information. The primary hubs for interagency collaboration and collection, within the US, are the Department of Homeland Security-funded state and local fusion centers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s joint terrorism task forces (JTTFs). Both of these entities focus on negative intelligence. The FBI JTTFs focus on one element of negative intelligence, the DHS fusion centers have unfocused, but still negative, missions, due to bureaucratic realities. Meanwhile, other government agencies, notably the CIA’s National Resources Division and even other elements of the FBI are engaged in uncoordinated collection, an activity that threatens to bring even more disorganization to the homeland-security enterprise. Rather than creating yet another agency, the strengths of both the JTTFs and the fusion centers should be leveraged, in conjunction with other domestically operating collectors, to establish new platforms, using fusion centers as a backbone, staffed with a service of joint duty personnel.

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