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(Image Source: Los Angeles Times)
BY JOHN O’CONNOR
ANCHOR LOGAN TITTLE
A new bipartisan senate panel report
shows“anti-terrorism” information centers have violated citizen’s civil liberties
while failing to provide virtually any useful intelligence. NBC has more.
“The Department
of Homeland Security is under fire for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an anti-terror
program tracking U.S. citizens. (flash) Fusion intelligence centers have come up with mostly
useless information.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, the senate subcommittee
released a 146-page report on Tuesday saying between April 2009 and April 2010, fusion
The report went on to say the information was “ … oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely,
sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally
for as much as $1.4 billion in taxpayer money earmarked for fusion centers and that some
of the centers listed on paper by the Homeland Security Department do not even exist.”
But
The Hill reports DHS officials in charge of the operation blasted the senate panel and
its findings — saying the information was out of date and that the committee refused
to review relevant data.
“Department officials [said] … the report was highly
misrepresentative and seriously flawed. They say congressional investigators looked at
a narrow set of data that did not take into account a plethora of other intelligence-gathering
tools associated with fusion centers.”
One official told the Huffington post “guarding
against terrorism” isn’t the only purpose the centers serve. He notes they also “combat
crimes” and provide “intelligence” to local agencies.