Expansion of U.S. Political Police — The Details
Posted by Mike E on December 21, 2010
“The old view that ‘if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that – the old view.”
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
Democracy Now writes: The Washington Post has revealed new details about how the United States has assembled a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
As part of the system, the FBI is operating a massive database known as Guardian with the names and personal information of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents who have never committed a crime but were reported to have acted suspiciously by a local police officer or a fellow citizen.
The database contains over 160,000 suspicious activity files. Despite the sweeping size of the database, the FBI says it has resulted in only five arrests and no convictions. In addition, the Post reveals the FBI is storing 96 million fingerprints in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
The Post also reports local law enforcement agencies have begun using surveillance equipment designed for war zones. In Memphis, Tennessee, some police patrol cars now contain military-grade infrared cameras that can snap digital images of one license plate after another while analyzing each almost instantly.
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Government builds vast domestic spying network: report
WASHINGTON — The US government is building a vast domestic spying network to collect information on Americans as part of expanding counter-terrorism efforts, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The unprecedented network involves local police, state and military authorities feeding a growing database on thousands of US citizens and residents, even though many have never been charged with breaking the law, the Post reported, citing numerous interviews and 1,000 documents.
The apparatus breaks new ground in the United States — where domestic security measures traditionally have faced legal limits — and raises questions about safeguards for privacy and civil liberties.
There was no immediate comment on the report from the Department of Homeland Security, which has built up the network with billions of dollars in grants to state governments since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The effort is driven by concerns about “homegrown” terrorism, with a spate of recent cases involving US citizens or legal residents accused of plotting attacks on American soil.
The information compiled on Americans is supposed to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but the program’s efficacy remains unclear while rights groups worry about the effect on civil liberties, the Post wrote.
“It opens a door for all kinds of abuses,” Michael German, a former FBI agent at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the paper. “How do we know there are enough controls?”
The domestic apparatus includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, with at least 935 created since the 2001 attacks or newly focused on counter-terrorism, the paper wrote.
The FBI maintains a database of profiles on tens of thousands of Americans reported to be “acting suspiciously,” and local and state police started contributing to the files two years ago.
Some 890 state and local agencies have filed 7,197 reports, but there have been no convictions yet in any of the cases, the paper said.
Under current plans, the new Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or SAR, will ensure that a central database will one day contain files sent in by all of the country’s police departments.
The network has local police working as intelligence “analysts” without the extensive training of FBI or CIA officers.
Some police departments have hired instructors with hardline views who portray the country’s Islamic community as overrun with radical extremists, the paper wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security told the newspaper it was working on guidelines for local authorities seeking out terrorism experts.
The Post investigation also revealed that technologies and methods developed for use in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now being employed by law enforcement agencies in the United States.
These include hand-held fingerprint scanners, biometric data devices and unmanned aircraft monitoring the border with Mexico and Canada.
The cost of the domestic spying network is difficult to measure, but the Department of Homeland Security has provided 31 billion dollars in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for counter-terrorism measures, including 3.8 billion dollars handed out this year.
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One of the Washington Post articles:
‘Top Secret America’ filtering down to local level
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation’s history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The government’s goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.
Other democracies, Britain and Israel, to name two, are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.
This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger “Top Secret America” created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.
Today’s story examines how “Top Secret America” plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11.
The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100 interviews and 1,000 documents, found that:
* Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.
* The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain.
* Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies.
* The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.
The need to identify U.S.-born or naturalized citizens who are planning violent attacks is more urgent than ever, U.S. intelligence officials say. This month’s FBI sting operation involving a Baltimore construction worker who allegedly planned to bomb a Maryland military recruiting station is the latest example. It followed a similar arrest of a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen allegedly seeking to detonate a bomb near a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. There have been nearly two dozen other cases just this year.
“The old view that ’if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won’t have to fight them here’ is just that, the old view,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told police and firefighters recently.
The Obama administration heralds this local approach as a much-needed evolution in the way the country confronts terrorism.
However, just as at the federal level, the effectiveness of these programs, as well as their cost, is difficult to determine. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, does not know how much money it spends each year on what are known as state fusion centers, which bring together and analyze information from various agencies within a state.
The total cost of the localized system is also hard to gauge. The DHS has given $31 billion in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, including $3.8 billion in 2010. At least four other federal departments also contribute to local efforts. But the bulk of the spending every year comes from state and local budgets that are too disparately recorded to aggregate into an overall total. The paper’s findings paint a picture of a country at a crossroads, where long-standing privacy principles are under challenge by these new efforts to keep the nation safe.
The streets of Memphis, Tenn., are a world away from the streets of Kabul, yet these days, the same types of technologies and techniques are being used in both places to identify and collect information about suspected criminals and terrorists. The examples go far beyond Memphis.
* Hand-held, wireless fingerprint scanners were carried by U.S. troops during the insurgency in Iraq to register residents of entire neighborhoods. L-1 Identity Solutions is selling the same type of equipment to police departments to check motorists’ identities.
* In Arizona, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Facial Recognition Unit, using a type of equipment prevalent in war zones, records 9,000 biometric digital mug shots a month.
* U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies General Atomics’ Predator drones along the Mexican and Canadian borders – the same kind of aircraft, equipped with real-time, full-motion video cameras, that has been used in wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan to track the enemy.
Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/12/20/1471993/top-secret-america-filtering-down.html#ixzz18mzwW8RT
