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Fusion Centers Gathering Much More Than Terrorism Data « Government Against The People

Fusion Centers Gathering Much More Than Terrorism Data

November 16, 2010 by flatcap

Inside the Miami-Dade fusion center

As we’ve said several times before, “weapons and tactics developed by the U.S. military for use in combat zones can and will be used domestically.” A corollary to that statement is: “Anti-terrorism measures developed for use against hypothetical bearded men hiding in caves can and will be used against American civilians.”

About a year ago, a police officer in Maryland noticed a truck loaded with plastic pallets driving down a main road in the early morning. He normally wouldn’t have given it a second look, but the officer had seen a bulletin from the state’s “coordination and analysis center” advising that such thefts were costing bakeries and grocers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sure enough, the pallets were stolen.

Cracking down on pallet thieves wasn’t quite the mission envisioned for “fusion centers,” 72 facilities across the country that were started after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks to improve information-sharing and threat analysis among local law enforcement.

The centers, which have received $426 million in federal funding since 2004, were designed as an early warning system against the next attack. Lately, amid the recent uptick in homegrown plots, the Homeland Security Department has been touting fusion centers as a means of thwarting domestic terrorism.

But it turns out that homegrown terrorism pales in frequency and fatalities compared with typical street crime, so many of the centers have begun collecting and distributing criminal intelligence, even of the most mundane kind.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

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