More On Those Fusion Centers
Jul 31, 2020233K Shares3.4M Views
Building off Jeff’s post, over at the ACLU’s blog, Mandy Simon has a succinct run-down of why you should be concernedabout the growth of military/intelligence/law enforcement fusion centers:
- **Ambiguous lines of authority. **Who is the boss of you exactly? So many jurisdictions and no clear lines of authority make us nervous.
- **Private Sector Participants. **You’re BFF with those guys. Using private-sector companies and corporations to get information about me makes me worry about who has access to that information. And, frankly, it only makes me like you less.
- **Military Participation. **Ever hear of Posse Comitatus?
- **Data Fusion = Data Mining. **A lot of hay means a lot of ways to sift through that hay and a lot of hay sifters sifting through that hay. Listen. Bottom line — enough with the hay. You are data mining. Knock it off.
- **Excessive Secrecy. **You keep telling me to trust you baby, but you’re always keeping secrets. Without oversight and uniform guidelines that means no real rules and that doesn’t work when you’ve got our information at your fingertips.
The only thing I’m unsure about is whether this is an actual Posse Comitatus concern. Posse Comitatus forbids the military’s involvement in law enforcement. Usually it refers to things like executing warrants or raiding houses or other such actions. The military — busy as it is these days — is pretty cool with that, generally. I’m unfamiliar with any examples of Posse Comitatus violation. But it wouldn’t be something the Bush administration wouldn’t do; and it fairly stands as a potential concern.
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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