DHS Fusion Centers produce a "Bunch of Crap" according to a Senate report.
The Senate report (pdf.) is as much an indictment of Congress as it is the Homeland Security Department. In setting up the department, lawmakers wanted their states to decide what to spend the money on. Time and again, that setup has meant the federal government has no way to know how its security money is being spent.
Inside Homeland Security, officials have long known there were problems with the reports coming out of fusion centers, the report shows.
"You would have some guys, the information you'd see from them, you'd scratch your head and say, 'What planet are you from?'" an unidentified Homeland Security official told Congress.
They’re supposed to be “one of the centerpieces of our counterterrorism strategy,” according to Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. In practice, not so much.
The Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found no evidence that DHS’ 70-plus fusion centers — places where state, local and federal law enforcement analyze and share information – uncovered a single terrorist threat between April 1, 2009 and April 30, 2010. Terrorism is thankfully rare within the United States. But during that time, the FBI discovered would-be New York subway attacker Najibullah Zazi; U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood; Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane; and, in early May 2010, Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate an SUV in Times Square. DHS has praised the fusion centers’ work in helping on the Zazi and Shahzad cases. The Senate found fusion centers played little, if any, role in either case.
“Nor,” the Senate panel writes in its just-released report, analyzing more than 80,000 fusion center documents, “could [the inquiry] identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot.” Unnamed DHS officials told the panel the fusion centers produce “predominantly useless information” and “a bunch of crap.” An internal 2010 assessment, which DHS did not share with Congress, found that a third of all fusion centers don’t have defined procedures for sharing intelligence — “one of the prime reasons for their existence.” At least four fusion centers identified by DHS “do not exist,” the Senate found.
As civil libertarian groups have long warned (pdf.), those that do are hives of incompetence, bureaucracy, mission creep and possible civil-liberties abuses. Despite instituting privacy protections in 2009, the Senate report discloses, a third of reviewed fusion center intelligence reports either “lacked any useful information” on terrorism or potentially violated civil liberties. Other reports sat for months, until their information was “obsolete” by the time DHS published it. Instead of focusing on terrorism, “most information” from the centers was about ordinary crime, such as “drug, cash or human smuggling.”
What’s more, fusion centers are only supposed to analyze and spread information, not collect it. But along the way, they scooped up items like a leaflet for the Mongols motorcycle club in California telling bikers to be “courteous” to police. Oh, and a notation that a U.S. citizen was speaking at a mosque — without any derogatory information about either the citizen or the mosque.
Five centers the Senate studied spent their federal terrorism grant money on “hidden ‘shirt button’ cameras,” cellphone tracking systems and other surveillance tools. They also spent their cash on things like “dozens of flat-screen TVs” and SUVs — sometimes claiming that Chevrolet Tahoes were intended to help “respond to chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) incidents.” Others used fusion-center money to purchase equipment for medical examiners.
The Senate report found that Fusion Centers, operated by the Department of Homeland Security, "often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence" and stored records on U.S. persons, "possibly in violation of the Privacy Act."
DHS intelligence reporters overstepped legal boundaries, including reporting on First Amendment-protected activities lacking a nexus to violence or criminality, and reporting on or improperly characterizing political, religious or ideological speech that is not explicitly violent or criminal.
The Department of Homeland Security compiled and disseminated the following information as part of a post-9/11 partnership with state and local law enforcement to prevent terrorism: DHS doesn’t appear to care how it spends its cash. The Senate inquiry determined that DHS was “unable to produce a complete and accurate tally of the expense of its support for fusion centers.” Its estimates range between $289 million and $1.4 billion. In other words, DHS doesn’t even know how much money it’s spent on what it calls a centerpiece of its counterterrorism strategy.
And the fusion centers, in the Senate’s telling, have a hard time balancing civil liberties and rapid analysis. After DHS analyst Daryl Johnson’s 2009 report about right-wing extremism caused a popular backlash, Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute ordered that fusion-center intelligence products had to go through a bureaucratic, multi-agency review for potential civil-liberties violations. For the past three years, the review has “radically slowed down the reporting process” — which might be problematic, if the fusion centers were actually uncovering terrorist plots.
But they’re not. The Senate reviewed 610 draft reports from fusion centers between April 2009 and April 2010. The vast majority of them came from three states: Texas, California and Arizona. Nearly a third of them, 188, were “cancelled,” either because they lacked “useful information” or “for running afoul of departmental guidelines meant to guard against civil liberties or Privacy Act protections.” Only 94 were in any way related to terrorism.
“Of those 94 reports,” the Senate found, “most were published months after they were received; more than a quarter appeared to duplicate a faster intelligence-sharing process administered by the FBI; and some were based on information drawn from publicly available websites or dated public reports.” One such report, in November 2009, reported that al-Qaida propagandist Anwar Awlaki praised the Fort Hood attacks — four days after the Los Angeles Times reported that. “Surprisingly,” the Senate found, “a subsequent performance review for the [report's] author cited this report as a signature accomplishment.”
Additionally, the subcommittee found false and misleading information about the alleged “anti-government, anti-Semitic and pro-Constitutional connections” of Jared Loughner in the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others. The subcommittee found that Loughner never had any such connections. Lastly, the subcommittee found that the very controversial 2009 Missouri Information Analysis Center Report, more commonly known as the MIAC Militia Report, was based on inaccurate and misleading information.
The DHS officials who filed useless, problematic or even “potentially illegal” reports generally faced no sanction for their actions. In fact, the subcommittee investigation was able to identify only one case in which an official with a history of serious reporting issues faced any consequences for his mistakes – he was required to attend an extra week of reporting training.
"Congress and two administrations have urged DHS to continue or even expand its support of fusion centers, without providing sufficient oversight to ensure the intelligence from fusion centers is commensurate with the level of federal investment," the report said.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/fusion-centers/
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20121003/DA1LTPN80.html
Fusion and Fear in America: The non-existent “terrorist threat.”
DHS has no financial oversight and cannot even identify how much it has spent, where there is more than $1 billion difference in its own estimates. So what precisely are we getting for our money?
These “fusion centers” have been created to integrate research on terrorist activities at the federal, state, and local level. So what have they produced? The answers appears to be, NOTHING! Read and then reread the crucial finding of this extensive study: “Despite reviewing 13 months’ worth of reporting originating from fusion centers from April 1, 2009 to April 30, 2010, the Subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot”!
And there is more. ”At DHS headquarters, Reports Officers who reviewed the draft HIRs from fusion centers before they were to be published found many of the reports useless. The officers shared those sentiments in written comments they made recommending that particular HIR draft reports be cancelled. At times they expressed amazement at the poor quality of reporting . . . . Of the 574 unclassified draft reports field officers filed, the Subcommittee investigation counted 188 marked by DHS reviewers as cancelled, nearly a third . . . . Of the 86 unclassified reports published, the Subcommittee found only 94 which related in some way to potential terrorist activity, or the activities or a known or suspected terrorist . . . . some were based on information from publicly available web sites or dated public reports”. Virtually none of them contained any information of value.
The problem, of course, is that DHS has been consuming vast resources from the national treasury while accomplishing nothing of value with regard to its anti-terrorism function. Instead, it is acquiring vast stocks of ammunition that is not even permissible for use in combat under the Geneva Conventions. DHS appears to be preparing to go to war with the American people. I am reminded of that old cartoon: that we have met the enemy and it is us! The fear induced in the public by these machinations has reached historic proportions. Perhaps the best summation of where we are has come from John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, who has captured the situation we are in. Everyone needs to reflect on the United States having become obsessed with national security, even to the extent of gutting our Bill of Rights and turning the country into a “surveillance society”. It is long past time that serious consideration be given to dismantling DHS and returning the organization of our government to its far saner past.
Campus Security Guidelines: Recommended operational policies for local and campus law enforcement agencies.
Potential Risks and Threats: Local and campus law enforcement should work together to
improve information-sharing and threat assessments in their jurisdiction.
Local and campus law enforcement should collaborate to address potential threats on and
off campus.
Law enforcement must be allowed to share records with other departments in order to fully
evaluate potential threats.
Campus public safety must be included in area fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task
Forces as a means to share intelligence and information.
Media and Public Relations:
Local and campus law enforcement should plan and practice joint media and the public relations scenarios, as perceptions of competency and coordination are paramount during a critical incident on campus. (Ironic?)
Preparation and plans should be made to work with the media before, during, and after
incidents.
Messages released to the media should be coordinated between local law enforcement and
campus public safety.
Local and campus law enforcement should reach out to members of the campus in order to
build trust and improve relationships with students.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/10/04/fusion-and-fear-in-america-the-non-existent-terrorist-threat/
http://campussecurity.missouri.org/files/Campus%20Security%20Guidelines.pdf
DHS issued false ‘Water Pump Hack’ report; called it a "success."
When an Illinois fusion center distributed a report last year stating that hackers from Russia had broken into a water district’s SCADA system and sabotaged a water pump, the Department of Homeland Security stepped in publicly to denounce the report as false, blaming the regional fusion center for spreading unsubstantiated claims and sowing panic in the industrial control system community.
But while DHS was busy pointing a finger at the fusion center, its own Office of Intelligence and Analysis had been irresponsibly spreading the same false information privately in a report to Congress and the intelligence community, according to a Senate subcommittee investigation released late Tuesday. The DHS report was issued five days after the fusion center report was issued.
Even after the FBI and other investigators concluded a few days later that there was no merit to the hacking claims and that the reports were false, the DHS intelligence unit did not issue a correction to its report or notify Congress or the intelligence community that the information it spread was incorrect.
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.
The revelation is buried in a lengthy report released by the Senate’s bipartisan Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which examines the many failings of state fusion centers, which were set up in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an effort to improve intelligence collection and dissemination for state, local and federal law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies.
The water pump hack report spawned dozens of sensational news stories when it was leaked to reporters in November 2011. The fusion center report, which was titled “Public Water District Cyber Intrusion,” was distributed by the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center on Nov. 10 and given to state and federal law enforcement agencies, utilities and other groups.
The report, which was meant to be confidential, claimed that attackers from Russia had hacked into the network of a software vendor that made the SCADA system used by a water district in Illinois and stolen usernames and passwords that the vendor maintained for its customers. The hackers then supposedly used the credentials to gain remote access to the utility’s network and cause a water pump to burn out. The report was leaked to the media by an industrial control systems expert who had gained access to it.
The report was significant at the time because it represented the first known attack of this kind involving hackers breaking into an industrial control system in the U.S. and sabotaging equipment. As the Senate investigators point out in their report, earlier that year Defense Department officials had stated that the U.S. would treat such attacks on critical infrastructure systems as an act of war if they caused widespread casualties.
But none of the information was true, and the authors of the fusion center report could have easily discovered this had they bothered to investigate the matter even a little.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/dhs-false-water-pump-hack/