Fusion Center director: We do not spy on US citizens, just anti-government groups.
An official from an Arkansas State Fusion Center recently spoke to the press to clear up what he called "misconceptions" about what his office actually does, with depressingly hilarious results.
"The misconceptions are that we are conducting spying operations on US citizens, which is of course not the fact. That is absolutely not what we do," fusion center director Richard Davis told the local press.
Fusion center employees are in a tight spot to justify the existence of their operations after multiple congressional reports over the past year took them to task for being poorly run, duplicative of other counterterrorism efforts, privacy violative wastes of money, or some combination of the three.
So what does Mr. Davis' fusion center do, then? Why does it exist?
The Arkansas fusion center director, after having flatly denied that his office spies on US citizens, told the reporter the following:
"I do what I do because of what happened on 9/11," Davis says. "There's this urge and this feeling inside that you want to do something, and this is a perfect opportunity for me."
Davis says Arkansas hasn't collected much information about international plots, but they do focus on groups closer to home.
"We focus a little more on that, domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government," he says. "We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information."
So the fusion center does in fact spy on US citizens! Among them, "groups that are anti-government." But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here: perhaps Mr. Davis thinks that people who hold "anti-government" views should not be treated as US citizens?
The fact is, in the United States, holding "anti-government" views is protected by the First Amendment. And everyone in the United States, not just its citizens, is protected by the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Disliking the government isn't a crime. But that's not stopping many fusion centers from associating dissent with terrorism.
A Department of Homeland Security white paper on budget recommendations for 2013 placed a strong emphasis on maintaining and growing fusion centers.
“The Budget continues to build State and local analytic capabilities through the National Network of Fusion Centers, with a focus on strengthening cross-Department and cross-government interaction with fusion centers,” the DHS paper states.
http://nwahomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=415892