DHS intelligence brochure details how massive they have become.
The Department of Homeland Security’s production of domestic intelligence has increased substantially over the last few years according to a brochure of “intelligence products” published last month by Cryptome. The 2012 DHS Intelligence Enterprise Product Line Brochure is “a standardized catalogue of intelligence reports and products that represent the full breadth” of the agency’s analytical capabilities. It provides descriptions of each type of product created by the DHS Intelligence Enterprise as well as the classification level and instructions on how DHS “customers” can obtain the products.
The brochure describes more than fifty intelligence product lines from seven DHS components including the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection and the Secret Service. The classifications of the products range from unclassified to Top Secret with more than thirty product lines being produced with classified material. Readers of Public Intelligence and other websites that publish government documents will likely recognize a number of the products, such as the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) Snapshot series or Roll Call Releases. However, the brochure describes dozens of intelligence products from parts of the government that you may not have known were components of DHS. For example, the U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence Coordination Center produces thirteen separate intelligence product lines, some of which are released daily. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and DHS OIA each produce twelve separate intelligence product lines. The Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services each produce an assortment of products, from colorful posters to “fast-paced” intelligence videos designed to inform stakeholders of “recent intelligence reporting, terrorism trends, and terrorist incidents.”
In 2008, a report produced by the RAND Corporation on behalf of the DHS OIA recommended that a “domestic intelligence agency” be created for combating terrorism. A 2006 strategic plan for the DHS Intelligence Enterprise authored by then Chief Intelligence Officer Charles E. Allen stated that DHS planned to “provide valuable, actionable intelligence and intelligence-related information for and among the National leadership, all components of DHS, our federal partners, state, local, territorial, tribal and private sector customers” by developing systems for the collection, analysis and production of intelligence products for DHS stakeholders. Allen, who formerly served as Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Collection, stated in the plan that he would be a “forceful advocate for intelligence within the Department, with the Intelligence Community, the Office of Management and Budget, our Congressional Oversight Committees as well as with our State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial and Private Sector customers.”
A report released last week by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that the nationwide network of state and local intelligence fusion centers created by DHS have produced little in the way of actionable intelligence relating to terrorist threats. Surveying fusion center reports from a thirteen month span between 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.” The Senate report states that one former Senior Reports Officer cited the volume of “useless” information as a significant problem with DHS’ domestic intelligence collection:
“A lot of the reporting was predominantly useless information,” one former Senior Reports Officer, who worked in the Reporting Branch from 2006 to 2010, told the Subcommittee. “You had a lot of data clogging the system with no value.” Overall, the former official estimated 85 percent of reports coming out of the Reporting Branch were “not beneficial” to any entity, from federal intelligence agencies to state and local fusion centers.
With over seventy fusion centers around the country, many producing nationally distributed intelligence reports, and more than fifty separate intelligence product lines produced by DHS components, the sheer volume of reporting has the potential to overload law enforcement, making them less attentive to legitimate threats and ultimately making us less safe.
http://publicintelligence.net/dhs-domestic-intelligence/
Task force tells DHS to offer ‘cool’ cybersecurity jobs to gov. workers and test them like pilots.
In order to attract the highly skilled and qualified cybersecurity workers the Department of Homeland Security needs to fulfill its mission of protecting government computer systems and overseeing the security of critical infrastructure systems, DHS has to reserve its coolest cybersecurity jobs for federal workers, not contractors, according to a task-force report submitted to DHS this month.
This means, in part, hiring at least 600 new cybersecurity professionals, including ones who have proven, hands-on experience to take on critical tasks, the task force recommended in its 41-page report (.pdf).
The government needs to focus less on professional certifications in making its hiring decisions and more on real-world experience and expertise. To do this, it needs to build a system for actively measuring these skills, such as one that is currently used for testing pilots, the group said.
The group noted that pilots undergo situational testing that becomes more complicated as their skills increase, such as placing them in conditions where the weather deteriorates or where systems malfunction, in order to test them under duress.
“The result is a continuous improvement in pilot competency and proficiency,” the task force wrote in its report, noting that pilots must pass proficiency exams “not once but regularly — as often as every six months for some pilots — in order to keep their jobs.”
“The standards are strict because people’s lives depend on these professionals doing their job effectively,” the group noted. “Certainly the risks of malicious actors penetrating the computer systems of America’s power systems, or hostile nations stealing U.S. military and economic secrets, rises to a similar level of urgency.”
The task force, composed of 15 people, was co-chaired by Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity training institute, and Jeff Moss, a former hacker and founder of the BlackHat and DefCon security and hacker conferences. Moss is currently chief security officer at ICANN — which helps oversee the internet domain name system and the maintenance of other core parts of the global internet.
Known as the Homeland Security Advisory Council Task Force on CyberSkills, the group was set up in July upon the request of DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to develop a plan to attract workers with high levels of cybersecurity skills who can fill major gaps in the DHS’s workforce. The task force consulted with outside experts from private industry, academia and government to compile its recommendations.
“This is all about getting better people,” DHS Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute told Wired. “The people we have are great. But we need people with better skill sets…. We really need people with cutting-edge, highly technical and sophisticated skill sets. We’re not going to pull them out of the air. We’ve got to deliberately focus on creating systems that generate people with those skill sets willing to serve in the public sector.”
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/dhs-cybersecurity-taskforce/
Fusion centers: Invading your privacy at your expense.
The U.S. government has spent up to $1.4 billion of taxpayer money since 2003 to create “threat fusion centers” under the guise of fighting terrorism. Yet a two-year bi-partisan report recently released by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that these “fusion centers,” operating under the control of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in efforts to engage national, state and local intelligence, have not yielded any useful information to support federal counterterrorism intelligence efforts.
Most people who rely on print and TV news probably have never heard of fusion centers. There are as many as 72 of these facilities. 50 state-based and 22 urban centers were set up during the Bush presidency in cooperation between the DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Fusion centers contain large data warehouses that collect information from all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, the military, state and local police agencies, as well as privately owned corporations and organizations. That information includes the cell phone data and emails of every American citizen. There is one of these facilities in Madison near the Dane county regional airport, at 2445 Darwin Road. (See slideshow or view an interactive map of their locations here).
According to Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the DHS described its fusion centers as “one of the centerpieces of [its] counterterrorism strategy” and its database was supposed to be a central repository of known or “appropriately suspected” terrorists. In theory, local law enforcement officers, in conjunction with DHS officials, conduct surveillance and write up a report known as a Homeland Intelligence Report (HIR) for the DHS to review. If credible, the DHS would then spread the information to the larger intelligence community.
The Senate report, however, found that the fusion centers failed to uncover a single terrorist threat and only gathered information that is used for ordinary criminal investigations that local law enforcement agencies are well-capable of doing. Even DHS officials told the panel the fusion centers produce “predominantly useless information” and “a bunch of crap.”
Five centers the Senate studied spent their federal terrorism grant money on “hidden ‘shirt button’ cameras,” cell phone tracking systems and other surveillance tools. They also spent taxpayer money 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.”
Here a few more details of what the Senate report reveals:
A DHS intelligence officer filed a draft report about a U.S. citizen who appeared at a Muslim organization to deliver a day-long motivational talk and a lecture on positive parenting.
An intelligence officer decided to report on two men who were fishing at the US-Mexican border. A reviewer commented, “I…think that this should never have been nominated for production, nor passed through three reviews.”
A report was submitted on a motorcycle group for passing out leaflets informing members of their legal rights. A reviewer commented, “The advice given to the groups’ members is protected by the First Amendment.”
And more from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which filed a lawsuit against the FBI, DOJ and NSA regarding fusion centers:
A DHS analyst at a Wisconsin fusion center prepared a report about protesters on both sides of the abortion debate, despite the fact that no violence was expected.
A Texas fusion center released an intelligence bulletin that described a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department and hip hop bands to spread Sharia law in the U.S.
The same month, but on the other side of the political spectrum, a Missouri Fusion Center released a report on “the modern militia movement” that claimed militia members are “usually supporters” of third-party presidential candidates like Ron Paul and Bob Barr.
In March 2009 the Virginia Fusion Center issued a terrorism threat assessment that described the state’s universities and colleges as “nodes for radicalization” and characterized the “diversity” surrounding a Virginia military base and the state’s “historically black” colleges as possible threats.
http://www.examiner.com/article/fusion-centers-invading-your-privacy-at-your-expense