By MIA STEINLE
Updated October 5, 2012.
A Department of Homeland Security effort to improve the sharing of
terrorism-related intelligence among state and local governments and
with officials in Washington has yielded “shoddy” information and civil
liberties violations, according to a
Senate investigation.
The two-year bipartisan investigation by the Senate’s Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations found that the Department of Homeland
Security’s poor oversight of “fusion centers”—local intelligence-sharing
hubs it created in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11—led to
“hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars” being wasted.
“The investigation found that top DHS officials consistently made
positive public comments about the value and importance of fusion
centers’ contributions to federal counterterrorism efforts, even as
internal reviews and non-public assessments highlighted problems at the
centers and dysfunction in DHS’ own operations,” the report said.
Up to $1.4 billion of federal funds has been spent on fusion centers since 2003, according to the investigation.
“But the report documents spending on items that did little to help
share intelligence, including gadgets such as ‘shirt button’ cameras,
$6,000 laptops and big-screen televisions. One fusion center spent
$45,000 on a decked-out SUV that a city official used for commuting,”
The Washington Post reported.
Intelligence coming from the fusion centers was often “flawed” and
“unrelated to terrorism,” according to the investigation. Additionally,
the investigation found that some unpublished documents contained
personal information that violated federal privacy law.
“DHS did not adequately train personnel it sent out to perform the
extremely sensitive task of reporting information about U.S. persons—a
job fraught with the possibility of running afoul of Privacy Act
protections of individuals’ rights to associate, worship, speak, and
protest without being spied on by their own government,” the report
said.
The investigation also found that many fusion center intelligence
reports were completed and internally distributed days—or even months—late.
This meant that potentially time-sensitive intelligence related to terrorism
was sitting in a backlog in an office. For example, fusion center reports from
June 2009 were “published” for internal use on average three months after the
intelligence had been gathered, according to the Senate report. As of November
2011, the investigation found that 307 intelligence reports were backlogged. A
DHS official interviewed by investigators called the publishing process “horribly
inefficient,” according to the report.
The Senate report comes several weeks after The Constitution Project,
a non-profit that advocates on issues such as privacy and
accountability,
released a report recommending reforms to fusion centers.
“If a national security program is not even effective, then it is not
worth any intrusion into privacy rights and civil liberties,” according
to The Constitution Project’s Sharon Bradford Franklin. “We agree with
the report’s conclusion that serious improvements are needed for the
training of fusion center personnel and also welcome the report’s clear
recommendation that DHS must reform its policies to protect civil
liberties and ‘adhere to the Constitution.’”
In a statement, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the
subcommittee that performed the investigation, said Congress should
“clarify the purpose” of fusion centers, adding, “Fusion centers may
provide valuable services in fields other than terrorism, such as
contributions to traditional criminal investigations, public safety, or
disaster response and recovery efforts.”
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the subcommittee,
said in a statement that instead of strengthening counterterrorism
efforts, the fusion centers “have too often wasted money and stepped on
Americans’ civil liberties.”
Mia Steinle is an investigator for the Project On Government Oversight.
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