The FBI Issued Warning To Law Enforcement Agencies After Being Duped By A Satirical 'Paid Protester' Website

from the our-nation's-best-and-brightest-I-guess dept

The federal government's "Fusion Centers" -- overseen by the DHS -- continue to provide us with the least bang for our federal buck. DHS officials have told Congress that the real purpose of the centers -- supposedly designed to gather intelligence about threats to the country -- is to generate conversations about terrorism. And those conversations are meant to portray the DHS as useful and worthy of continued funding.

Officials behind the false claims told Senate investigators that such reports weren’t meant to be “finished intelligence” and that despite their report’s inaccuracies and sloppy wording they considered it to be a “success.”

“[It did] exactly what it’s supposed to do – generate interest,” DHS officials told Senate investigators.

That's really not something we need. The country has plenty of terrorism awareness already. It doesn't need to have its time and money wasted on half-baked reports written by apparently half-baked DHS officials. Nor does it need the combined forces of federal and local law enforcement generating "leads" from citizens who are more racist than terrified, and pretending these bigoted assertions are useful intelligence. From this so-called "intelligence," DHS components (along with their local partners) head out into the field to violate rights and privacy. All this does is generate antipathy and waste tax dollars.

Apparently, government agencies will believe almost anything anyone tells them. How that's going to fight a war on terror is anyone's guess. A long-dormant satirical site recently became the focus of Fusion Center intel gathering, most likely thanks (at least in part) to some helpful citizens whose heads the joke sailed over.

A satirical website offering “rioters” for $99 each — with a “Car/Dumpster fire upgrade option available” — was cited by the FBI as evidence that “violent agitators” were being paid to cause mayhem in the early days of the George Floyd protests. Anti-terrorism agencies known as Fusion Centers, including the one in Maine, spread the bogus warning to local police departments, likely contributing to increased tension and conflict between officers and demonstrators in the streets.

A Situational Information Report by the FBI’s San Antonio Division, dated June 3, states: “unidentified individuals discussed various websites for payment to agitate and commit violent acts.” Payments to “violent agitators” were made “anonymously via Bitcoin” and “were rumored to be managed by members of Antifa.” The report claims “targets and locations were also discussed on the websites.”

The website, Protestjobs.com, was created in 2017 in response to conspiracy theories about George Soros funded paid protesters disrupting Trump events. After some initial popularity, the site receded into the internet background. But its popularity surged again after the George Floyd protests began, as theorists once again sold themselves on the idea that widespread civil unrest was actually the result of paid protesting.

The site's recent popularity generated articles at BuzzFeed and Reuters, both of which pointed out the site was satirical. Its popularity among conspiracy theorists resulted in a Snopes post debunking the notion that the site was actually offering paid protesters to whoever wanted to buy them.

We would expect debunkings like this to fail to persuade conspiracy theorists. What we wouldn't expect is for the nation's top investigative agency to do zero due diligence before informing other government agencies about this supposedly dangerous site.

Yet that same day, June 3, the FBI office in Texas was taking Protest Jobs deadly serious. Its report states: “The company offers a variety of protest packages that include, but are not limited to, proving spray paint artists, broken storefront windows, and car and dumpster fire upgrade options.”

The official warning sent to local cops in early June by the Maine Information and Analysis Center (MIAC) and other Fusion Centers linked to that report and said it “discusses the use of various websites for payment to individuals who agitate and commit violent acts during protests.”

Look, we understand securing the nation is a round-the-clock job. And it's not an easy one. But when civil liberties and privacy are on the line -- as they always are when there's a Fusion Center in operation -- we would prefer to see our intelligence gathering public servants be a bit more intelligent. The FBI being duped by a clearly satirical website is a horrible look, especially as the agency continues to increase its involvement in the national security arena. Its history of rights violations is already lengthy and disturbing. But now it's operating in an area with less oversight, laxer rules, and more deference from courts. It's only a matter of time before terror warriors end up ruining someone's life because they didn't get the joke.

Filed Under: dhs, fake news, fbi, fusion centers, protesters, warnings

Twitter Cuts Off Firehose Access To DHS Fusion Centers

from the you-can-hear-Sen.-McCain's-teeth-gritting-from-here dept

Earlier this year, Twitter pulled the plug on some of Dataminr's customers, specifically the intelligence agencies it was selling its firehose access to. Twitter made it clear Dataminr's access to every public tweet wasn't to be repurposed into a government surveillance tool.

That being said, everything swept up by Dataminr was public. There was no access to direct messages or tweets sent from private accounts. And Twitter seemingly is doing nothing to prevent Dataminr from selling this same access to the FBI, an agency that's far more an intelligence agency than a law enforcement agency these days -- one that thinks it should be allowed to do everything the CIA does, if not more.

Presumably, the FBI pinned its law enforcement badge to its chest when hooking up with Dataminr because Twitter has had nothing to say about the partnership. And it's not as though Twitter is fine with just anyone selling analytic tools to law enforcement. It, along with Facebook, yanked Geofeedia's access to APIs simply because it didn't like how Geofeedia pitched its tweet-grabbing front end. In sales materials, the company strongly hinted that law enforcement agencies could use its software to stay "one step ahead" of citizens engaged in First Amendment-protected activity.

Twitter's standards are malleable, to say the least. But it does seems to be serious about refusing to let its service become just another government surveillance tool. The ACLU is reporting that Twitter has just cut off Dataminr access to the dozens of DHS "fusion centers" scattered across the country.

As of this week, Twitter has made sure that federally funded fusion centers can no longer use a powerful social media monitoring tool to spy on users. After the ACLU of California discovered the domestic spy centers had access to these tools, provided by Dataminr (a company partly owned by Twitter), Dataminr was forced to comply with Twitter’s clear rule prohibiting use of data for surveillance.

Twitter sent a letter to the ACLU of California this week confirming that Dataminr has terminated access for all fusion center accounts. The letter also makes clear that Dataminr will no longer provide social media surveillance tools to any local, state, or federal government customer.

Once again, the DHS and its local partners are still free to eyeball as many public tweets as they like, but without the robust front-end that hauls in hundreds of millions of tweets every day and sorts them into easily-surveillable categories. This is probably just as well, considering the DHS's "fusion centers" are underperforming boondoggles tasked mainly with fielding ridiculous complaints from Americans who actually believe "see something, say something™" helps the nation fight terrorism, rather than simply put more government boots on the Bill of Rights' neck.

Twitter's statement says it will continue to "work with" Dataminr to further limit its pool of government customers. Dataminr, on the other hand, says there's really nothing to worry about. It may be directly attached to the Twitter firehose, but its customers aren't.

Datatminr’s product does not provide any government customers with their own direct firehose access or features to export data; the ability to search raw historical Tweet archives or to target or profile users; conduct geospatial analysis; or any form of surveillance.

Well, sure. Not now. From the third-hand discussions of conversations between Twitter and Dataminr, it appears the company will only be able to offer a highly-filtered version of its firehose to government end users. If this results in less lucrative contracts, so be it. After all, Dataminr did itself no favors by marketing its software to law enforcement with the same sort of pitches that ended Geofeedia's relationship with the social media company.

Through a public records request, the ACLU of California discovered that the Los Angeles area fusion center, JRIC, was using Dataminr and had access to the company’s powerful Geospatial Analysis Application that enables keyword searches and location-based tracking. Settings in the Geospatial App even allowed the government to focus on monitoring journalists and organizations. Using Dataminr, fusion centers like JRIC could search billions of real-time and historical public tweets and then potentially share information with the federal government.

In an email to the Los Angeles Police Department, Dataminr also highlighted how its products could be customized to track protests by drawing from the complete Twitter “firehose” of public tweets. In a separate brochure, Dataminr touted the Geospatial App’s use to surveil a student protest.

None of this shows much in the way of consistency or integrity on Twitter's end. If Geofeedia's marketing materials bothered Twitter enough to completely yank its access, the sales pitches by Dataminr should have been equally concerning. But Dataminr is still hooked up to Twitter's hose and Geofeedia has been left to wander off somewhere into the software wilderness and die. Both marketed access to law enforcement using surveillance of First Amendment-protected activity, but only one is still allowed to do so.

Filed Under: data, dhs, firehose, fusion centers, homeland security, law enforcement, social media
Companies: dataminr, twitter

DHS Fusion Centers Monitored Occupy Wall Street Activities Using Powerful Tools Like... Google... And Twitter

from the blowing-money-fast dept

The government's extreme reactions to the Occupy Wall Street movement have been well-detailed here at Techdirt. The fact that most of what the Occupy movement did was protect free speech seemed to be lost on the many agencies -- both at local and national levels -- that opened investigations or abused their power in order to silence protesters.

The New York Times has obtained several documents detailing the DHS Fusion Centers' involvement in providing intel and investigative services during the nationwide spread of Occupy protests. What the documents show is a mismanaged hydra of input, each with its own ideas about what should be considered worthy of investigation.

When the Occupy protests spread across the country three years ago, state and local law enforcement officials went on alert. In Milwaukee, officials reported that a group intended to sing holiday carols at “an undisclosed location of ‘high visibility.’ ” In Tennessee, an intelligence analyst sought information about whether groups concerned with animals, war, abortion or the Earth had been involved in protests.

And in Washington, as officials braced for a tent encampment on the National Mall, their counterparts elsewhere sent along warnings: a link to a video of Kansas City activists who talked of occupying congressional offices and a tip that 15 to 20 protesters from Boston were en route. “None of the people are known to be troublemakers,” one official wrote in an email.

The definition of "terrorism" has become incredibly fluid in the years following the 9/11 attacks. Consequently, much of what was determined to be of interest to the Department of Homeland Security was nothing more than the act of protesting, something that has been a part of this nation since its very beginning. More than 4,000 pages were released to the New York Times, detailing the worries of multiple law enforcement agencies around the country. While there seems to be no evidence of outright surveillance (read: interception of communications), there is evidence that many agencies viewed those in the movement as persons of interest.

While some agencies (like Tennessee's) seemed to lapse into a state of paranoia, finding any sort of "social movement" to be possibly suspect:

The Boston Regional Intelligence Center, one of the most active centers, issued scores of bulletins listing hundreds of events including a protest of “irresponsible lending practices,” a food drive and multiple “yoga, faith & spirituality” classes.

Others rightly recognized that Occupy protests were Constitutionally-protected and opted out of providing intel.

An intelligence officer at the Delaware center responded to an inquiry about Occupy with an email that said, “Our fusion center has distanced itself from the movement because of 1st Amendment rights and because we have not seen any criminal activity to date.”

Tragicomically, reports also portray activities such as not shopping as cause for concern.

The report examined protesters’ “attitude towards retail,” suggested that business could be disrupted on the day after Thanksgiving and listed several “specific known threats.” They included credit card detractors equipped with scissors at malls and posters offering “help for people who want to put an end to mounting debt and extortionate interest rates with one simple cut” and a group of people who had declared on a website that they would “intentionally forgo the shopping frenzy.”

To be clear, large-scale protests are something local law enforcement should be prepared for, and some intelligence gathering is to be expected. Protests like these, including those specifically aimed at disrupting businesses, travel, etc., should expect some sort of law enforcement response. But when it transfers to a national level, the local response aspect is lost, buried under a deluge of overblown concerns and the Fusion Centers' ability to see terrorism in nearly every act -- even those protected by the Constitution.

Once you get past the potential chilling effects of the Fusion Centers' overenthusiastic collecting of Occupy information, you arrive at something just as upsetting: it's a complete waste of taxpayer funds, something a Congressional investigation uncovered two years ago. (Of course, the DHS has yet to be held accountable for its failings...) It would be one thing if the DHS' worst aspects actually resulted in useful leads and the prevention of domestic terrorism. At least then, the agency would be able to justify the millions of dollars handed out to Fusion Centers. But when your "intelligence gathering" could be performed by anyone with a functional knowledge of the web, you're not really in the "intelligence-gathering" business, no matter what awesome, go-team-USA nameplate is hanging over the door.

It appears that they kept track of Occupy the same way everybody else did if they were so inclined—they looked stuff up online about them and summarized it. The documents are full of links to news stories and videos posted online. One e-mail sent out to multiple fusion centers simply explains how to use Google and Twitter to track publicly listed Occupy activities in various cities.

This appraisal by Julian Sanchez is even harsher. The prized Fusion Centers offer nothing that can't be provided by local law enforcement -- a lack of service we, as taxpayers, pay a premium for.

But even leaving aside any concerns about First Amendment–chilling effects, there’s simply no reason for the federal government to be footing any of the bill for local police functions. If, as it seems, fusion centers serve no real homeland security purpose, let’s shut them down and assume municipal cops are perfectly capable of carrying out traditional crowd control functions without help from Washington.

The Fusion Centers have done very little to shore up America's counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they've created huge databases of First Amendment-protected activities portrayed as potential terrorism, from people photographing public buildings and structures, to protesters threatening to avoid Black Friday sales. You may not be able to put a price tag on safety, but you can definitely make a very good guess as to how much money's been wasted.

Filed Under: dhs, fusion centers, law enforcement, occupy, surveillance

'See Something, Say Something' Campaign Creates Massive Database Of Useless Info From Citizens Spying On Each Other

from the the-government-is-the-worst-conspiracy-theorist dept

The ACLU's recent release of "Suspicious Activity Reports" from various California law enforcement agencies (working with DHS Fusion Centers) shows that the government has developed a strong culture of paranoia through its increasingly-broad anti-terrorism efforts. The catchphrase, "If you see something, say something," has resulted in plenty of seeing and saying, but has failed to turn up much in the way of usable counter-terrorism intelligence.

Much in the way that intelligence agencies like gathering data "just in case," the Fusion Centers are aided and abetted by law enforcement officials who are willing to add to the data piles by approaching anything "suspicious" (very broadly defined) as potentially terrorist-related. This state-approved paranoia has spilled over into the private sector as the documents detail several second-hand reports from concerned citizens.

In both cases (law enforcement and private individuals), much of the "suspicion" seems to be based solely on reported persons being (or appearing to be) Middle Eastern. This term shows up so often it's often simply abbreviated as ME. For instance, page 21 has a report of some "suspicious" photography occurring on a Metrolink train, involving two people, one dressed in a "'Middle Eastern' costume."

Speaking of photography, aiming a camera at any government building, power station, railroad track, bridge, dam, oil refinery, airport building or any other building that an observer feels should remain unphotographed is enough to get your description (at the very least) added to the FBI's e-Guardian database. Even filming on-duty cops can raise the "suspicions" of law enforcement [p. 10].

After responding to a call of disturbance aboard an MTA bus, a male white and a female white in a black Dodge Charger (newer model) video taping deputy personnel. When Sgt [redacted] attempted to contact the couple. they fled the scene and could not be located. The reason for the couple video taping is unknown.

There's more. Photographers filming a manufacturing plant deemed suspicious until questioning discovered they were filming the pollution, not the plant [p. 28]. Five males "photographing a mannequin on a bus bench" -- weird, but not dangerous [p. 50]. Man filming Highway 101, allegedly for a "Stop the Violence" video not cited or bothered further [p. 64], but like many others, had his case kicked up the ladder to the "JTTF" (Joint Terrorism Task Force). A citizen filming officers serving a warrant across the street from his/her house and is duly noted in the database [p. 167]. Throughout the 300 pages of reports, almost everything involving cameras, law enforcement (or concerned citizens) and structures is either added to the FBI's database or handed over to the JTTF.

This is troubling, but it gets worse. A demonstration against law enforcement's use of excessive force makes its way into the database [p. 165]. An "overly assertive" person complaining about security measures at the Shasta Dam (son had pocketknife confiscated) received his/her own entry into the e-Guardian database [p. 280]. An officer reports a traffic stop dealing with a person who was "unstable and possibly had a fetish about police that could easily turn to becoming antipolice" [p. 235]. This too results in a database entry.

The 300+ pages detail vagaries and contains several statements given by the type of people who peer through the slats of their blinds all day long, one hand resting on the phone in case anything "suspicious" happens. When you portray terrorist activity as omnipresent, you're basically asking to be inundated with useless "tips" detailing with very subjectively suspicious activity and having to entertain the fantasies of bigots and busybodies.

On May 25,2012, at approximately 0710 hours, the RP was commuting on the Sacramento Regional Transit commuter train when she overheard two passengers reading from a book that may have contained references to terrorist information gathering and strategy. [p. 171]

Since December 17,2011, the Chico Police Department (CPD) has responded to the Chico, CA on three different occasions in apartment complex located at response to receiving reports of a resident yelling in his apartment and making derogatory statements towards the United States and the president. [p. 185]

On 09/14/2011 Sac RTAC/CCIC received an email stating that an individual, living in New York, New York, may be here in the United States illegally. The complainant also stated that they do not know how the individual affords such a lavish lifestyle… [p. 213]

A private citizen observed two men, possibly of Middle Eastern decent [sic], at [redacted] gas station in Manteca, CA on 9/9/2011. The men were driving a vehicle with New York State plates. The citizen is aware of the current terrorist threat to NY... [p. 214]

Suspicious ME [Middle Eastern] Males Buy Several Large Pallets of Water [p. 270]

Dozens of low-quality tips like these pollute the report. An overheard question in a public restroom ("What jihad wouldn't want to kill Obama and get his 72 virgins?") [p. 223]. A "suspicious male" in possession of flight simulator software [p. 172]. A male taking photos of a feedlot [p. 173]. Someone goes down to the cop shop and shows an officer there how he/she can locate a "recipe" for rocket fuel at Make.com [p. 173]. "Suspicious" inquiry as to location of newly-built power plant (subject asks off-duty officer and another customer at gas station) [p. 203]. "Suspicious" but "cooperative" male "caught" taking pictures of the railroad [p. 211]. Person applying for a job at a prison leaves behind "suspicious" book called "Daily Reminder" filled with "arabic writing and phone numbers" [p.285].

Much of what doesn't detail useless bias projections or photographer harassment deals with theft. Lots and lots of theft. Some is troubling, like the disappearance of hundreds of pounds of fertilizer or dozens of propane tanks. (Then again, fertilizer is expensive and both products do have some resale value rather than only being valuable as bomb ingredients.) More troubling (at least to reporting officers and their supervisors) is the number of reports of weapon and uniform theft from official vehicles and buildings. Several reports of copper wiring disappearing from power stations and industrial sites also feature in the reports, suggesting there's something more nefarious afoot than the obvious, non-terroristic conclusion: an easily unloaded metal with a decent going rate.

Going beyond all of the mostly useless stuff lies the truly bizarre.

Student Found in Possession of Notebook Containing Radical Writings
On May 12, 2012, a Roseville Police Department officer working in the capacity of a School Resource Officer observed the partial quote "the blood of tyrants" on a woodshop project… [p. 171]

On 12 February 2012 at 0800, a UC Davis PD officer took a vandalism report at Emerson Hall Dorm, 1st floor men's restroom of anti-government graffiti written in black marker on the wall signed by the moniker name of [redacted] with a circle around the "E." [p. 191]

On 11/21/2011, an anonymous female called the CCIC to report possible illegal selling of controlled substance, Oxycotton [sic]. The caller is associated with the subject [redacted] attempting to sell oxycotton [sic] on his [redacted] page… [p. 202]

On 28 October 2011, Sacramento Police Department officers found two sets of anti-religious graffiti on a wall of the [redacted] The first set of graffiti, in black spray paint, was of 2 upside down crosses with a pentagram in the middle of [report ends]. [p. 206] (Halloween much?)

And then there's this. Unfortunately, the responding agency chose to use screenshots rather than delivering the entire report, so we'll never know where this was headed., but the opening partial paragraph is certainly intriguing.

On Saturday October 29th, A CHP Special Investigations Officer was off duty in a parking lot of a [redacted] in South Sacramento. He saw a parked custom Chopper style M/C that was chromed out with high handle bars in good shape. With his training and e[xpertise? ...] [p. 205]

With the exception of the erstwhile "Oxycotton" dealer, every one of these clearly non-terrorist activities ended up in the e-Guardian database.

Sure, there's some potentially useful counter-terrorism info in this collection, but the problem is that it makes up for a small subset of the data gathered. Not for nothing did a recent Congressional investigation tear into the DHS and its Fusion Centers for producing and acquiring such low-quality intelligence. According to the report, the centers have done little more than waste money and trample on civil liberties in the pursuit of hundreds of useless "leads."

As the ACLU points out, the system itself has been skewed towards collecting garbage for quite some time, thanks to the involved agencies' own efforts to expand the scope of their mission.

So why are police submitting reports (sometimes received from community members, private security guards and via anonymous tips) about such innocuous conduct for inclusion in anti-terrorism databases? Because under the NSI and related programs,everyone – our neighbors, public employees, storekeepers – are encouraged to help. "If you see something, say something," says the Department of Homeland Security. The "Functional Standard" for Suspicious Activity Reporting defines "suspicious activity" to include many activities that are not only lawful, but protected by the First Amendment. Even worse, the FBI encourages fusion centers not to limit themselves to the Functional Standard and instead to report "all potentially terrorism-related activity." With such a broad and vague standard, no wonder we are seeing innocent activities reported as "suspicious," especially when they involve community groups against whom we still see significant governmental bias.

The only upshot is that the involved definitions are in the process of being refined, along with the Functional Standard itself -- the inevitable result of major government entities (including the Senate's Homeland Security subcommittee) calling out a program as being completely useless. No one likes losing a budget line, so there's bound to be some improvement. However, any positives must be weighed against the FBI's tendency to declare nearly everything "relevant" to a terrorist investigation. To help guide this process towards something more useful and less damaging to the public, the ACLU is urging everyone to join its campaign to push the agencies to work towards smarter intelligence gathering, rather than simply gathering more data.

Filed Under: dhs, fusion centers, homeland security, see something say something

FBI Didn't Even Inform Fusion Center About Tamerlan Tsarnaev

from the perhaps-they-only-do-that-with-their-own-plots dept

Last year we noted that a Congressional investigation revealed that Homeland Security's "anti-terrorism fusion centers" were a complete joke. They created no useful intelligence, even though they cost a ton of taxpayer money, and they regularly violated American's civil liberties. In the wake of the Boston bombings, then, it might be useful to wonder how much the local fusion centers were involved in the process -- especially since the FBI had been aware of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had interviewed him. Well... it turns out that the FBI didn't bother to share that with the fusion center. The FBI did share info with state and local police, but not with the fusion center:

A spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department said the Boston Regional Intelligence Center [] was never notified about the FBI investigation.

In response, FBI supervisory Agent Jason Pack e-mailed a statement suggesting that state and local officials had ample access to information about the Tsarnaev investigation in 2011, through their participation in an FBI unit in Boston, the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Once again, this has people wondering why we have these fusion centers in the first place.

If the FBI’s investigatory work with state and locals on terrorism is situated at the JTTFs, as it appears to be, what useful purpose do fusion centers serve with respect to terrorism? The jury is out on that question. But we know a bit about some non-terrorism related activities at the BRIC.

A public records lawsuit in 2011 showed that the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, like other fusion centers nationwide, devoted resources and time to spying on perfectly peaceful dissenters like Veterans for Peace and Code Pink.

Perhaps the FBI only makes use of the fusion centers when stopping some of its self-created terrorist plots.

Filed Under: dhs, fbi, fusion centers, homeland security, tamerlan tsarnaev

New Evidence: Homeland Security Spied On Peaceful Protestors; Worried About Protests Getting News Coverage

from the homeland-security? dept

We just recently had a post on the head of one of Homeland Security's "Fusion Centers" (the same Fusion Centers found by a Congressional investigation to be a near total waste of time and money, finding no terrorists, but violating the public's civil liberties) who claimed that the DHS centers did not spy on Americans, and then immediately admitted that they spied on "anti-government" Americans.

The definition of "anti-government" was mostly left as an exercise to the reader. However, in a bout of good timing, the Partnership for Civil Justice has released some new DHS documents it received via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, showing that DHS regularly spied on peaceful demonstrators and activists. Because exercising your First Amendment rights must make you one of them there "anti-government" Americans, which means the DHS is free to spy on you.

Functioning as a secret political police force against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity, the heavily redacted documents show that the DHS “Threat Management Division” directed Regional Intelligence Analysts to provide a “Daily Intelligence Briefing” that includes a category of reporting on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations” along with “Domestic Terrorist Activity.” (p. 68)

The PCJF has obtained thousands of pages of documents pursuant to its Freedom of Information Act demands and made them available for public viewing. The newly obtained documents show coordination and intelligence monitoring by the DHS, the FBI, the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies of “Occupy-type” protests.

The documents show the routine use of Fusion Centers for intelligence gathering on peaceful demonstrations as well as the use of DHS’ “Mega Centers” for collection of surveillance information on demonstrations.

And it's not just the big cities. The new documents show that DHS is involved in spying on peaceful protesters and activists around the country. It also shows that DHS helped local law enforcement "crack down" on the various Occupy gatherings. But the key thing is that DHS seems to have no qualms at all about spying on anyone who disagrees with the prevailing positions of today's federal government. And it's clearly not because they're trying to protect others from any threat of actual harm. They seem to be focused on spying to further the goal of preventing the administration from looking bad:

The documents show a Department of Homeland Security that appears obsessed with the question of whether any and all protests that are being surveilled receive media attention and coverage. Reporting within the DHS on media coverage of First Amendment protected activities, even in the smallest places, appears to be a routine part of DHS intelligence reports. None of the documents explain why media coverage of peaceful demonstrations is of interest to law enforcement or concerns “homeland security” in any way.

That's because it doesn't concern "homeland security" at all. It concerns the job security of those employed by Homeland Security.

Filed Under: americans, dhs, fusion centers, homeland security, protesters, reputation, surveillance

Congressional Investigation Slams DHS Anti-Terror Centers: Wasted Taxpayer Funds, Created No Useful Intelligence & Violated Civil Liberties

from the have-we-done-anything-useful? dept

Since September 11th, the government has often had something of a blank check (and the equivalent lack of oversight) for anything labeled as being part of an anti-terror effort. As such, it should hardly come as a surprise that programs are wasteful, possibly fraudulent, bad for civil liberties and (oh yeah) completely useless (to actively harmful) in fighting terrorism. A Congressional investigation into the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) "fusion centers," which were supposed to be a key force in anti-terrorism efforts, presents an absolutely scathing condemnation of the effort.

The Subcommittee investigation found that DHS-assigned detailees to the fusion centers forwarded "intelligence" of uneven quality - oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism. The Subcommittee investigation also found that DHS officials' public claims about fusion centers were not always accurate. For instance, DHS officials asserted that some fusion centers existed when they did not. At times, DHS officials overstated fusion centers' "success stories." At other times, DHS officials failed to disclose or acknowledge non-public evaluations highlighting a host of problems at fusion centers and in DHS' own operations.

Oh, and did we mention how wasteful they were? Apparently, taxpayer money simply "disappeared" into the program often being spent on totally unrelated things like flat screen TVs:

The Subcommittee investigation also reviewed how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a component of DHS, distributed hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to support state and local fusion centers. DHS revealed that it was unable to provide an accurate tally of how much it had granted to states and cities to support fusion centers efforts, instead producing broad estimates of the total amount of federal dollars spent on fusion center activities from 2003 to 2011, estimates which ranged from $289 million to $1.4 billion. The Subcommittee investigation also found that DHS failed to adequately police how states and municipalities used the money intended for fusion centers. The investigation found that DHS did not know with any accuracy how much grant money it has spent on specific fusion centers, nor could it say how most of those grant funds were spent, nor has it examined the effectiveness of those grant dollars. The Subcommittee conducted a more detailed case study review of expenditures of DHS grant funds at five fusion centers, all of which lacked basic, "must-have" intelligence capabilities, according to assessments conducted by and for DHS. The Subcommittee investigation found that the state and local agencies used some of the federal grant money to purchase: dozens of flat-screen TVs; Sport Utility Vehicles they then gave away to other local agencies; and hidden "shirt button" cameras, cell phone tracking devices, and other surveillance equipment unrelated to the analytical mission of a fusion center.

Of course, this kind of thing isn't all that uncommon. I remember a story from nearly a decade ago about all the money designated for things like E911 services, instead being used to pay for boots and pens. We recently wrote about the failure of a NY City program to spy on Muslims to turn up a single lead, but this takes that kind of failure to a whole new level.

Of course, the scary part in all this isn't just the misuse of funds or the failure to produce anything relevant. It's that what was done almost certainly violated the public's rights. And apparently, such violations of civil liberties were a very common problem.

The inappropriate reporting appears to have been a regular problem. An April 2009 email from an alarmed senior I&A official stated: “[State and Local Fusion Center officials] are collecting open-source intelligence (OSINT) on U.S. persons (USPER), without proper vetting, and improperly reporting this information through homeland information reporting (HIR) channels,” wrote Barbara Alexander, then director of the Collection and Requirements Division, which oversaw HIR reporting. “The improper reporting of this information through HIR channels is likely a result of a lack of training on proper collection and reporting procedures . . . they are inadvertently causing problems.” In an interview with the Subcommittee, Ms. Alexander said she recalled being told the Reporting Branch was “flooded” with inappropriate reporting. “A lot of information was coming in inappropriately,” she remembered. “The information was not reportable.”

[....] Ms. Schlanger’s presentation, a copy of which DHS provided to the Subcommittee, indicated that areas in which DHS intelligence reporters had overstepped legal boundaries included: Reporting on First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality; reporting on or improperly characterizing political, religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal; and attributing to an entire group the violent or criminal acts of one or a limited number of the group’s members.

The investigation goes on to quote numerous examples of "reports" prepared on information that DHS is not allowed to report on as it violates civil liberties.

In the end, as with so many "anti-terror" programs, what we have is a program that took in a ton of taxpayer funds, with almost no oversight as to what happened to those funds (leading to $1.4 billion disappearing), no intelligence of any use but undertook plenty of efforts that were clearly beyond the mandate of Homeland Security. And all of this is supposed to make us feel safer?

Filed Under: abuse, civil liberties, congress, dhs, fusion centers, homeland security, terrorism, waste