Centers Tap Into Personal Databases
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.
One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.
Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to identify potential threats and improve the way information is shared. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies. They are expected to play important roles in national information-sharing networks that link local, state and federal authorities and enable them to automatically sift their storehouses of records for patterns and clues.
Though officials have publicly discussed the fusion centers’ importance to national security, they have generally declined to elaborate on the centers’ activities. But a document that lists resources used by the fusion centers shows how a dozen of the organizations in the northeastern United States rely far more on access to commercial and government databases than had previously been disclosed.
Those details have come to light at a time of debate about domestic intelligence efforts, including eavesdropping and data-aggregation programs at the National Security Agency, and whether the government has enough protections in place to prevent abuses.
The list of information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans’ locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.
Centers serving New York and other states also tap into a Federal Trade Commission database with information about hundreds of thousands of identity-theft reports, the document and police interviews show.
Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver’s license photos, while analysts in Rhode Island have access to car-rental databases. In Maryland, authorities rely on a little-known data broker called Entersect, which claims it maintains 12 billion records about 98 percent of Americans.
In its online promotional material, Entersect calls itself “the silent partner to municipal, county, state, and federal justice agencies who access our databases every day to locate subjects, develop background information, secure information from a cellular or unlisted number, and much more.”
Police officials said fusion center analysts are trained to use the information responsibly, legally and only on authorized criminal and counterterrorism cases. They stressed the importance of secret and public data in rooting out obscure threats.
“There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism” said Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. “That’s what post-9/11 is about.”
Government watchdogs, along with some police and intelligence officials, said they worry that the fusion centers do not have enough oversight and are not open enough with the public, in part because they operate under various state rules.
“Fusion centers have grown, really, off the radar screen of public accountability,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the District. “Congress and the state legislatures need to get a handle over what is going on at all these fusion centers.”
Fusion centers were formed in the wake of revelations that counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities missed or neglected evidence that the Sept. 11 attackers were in the United States while preparing to strike.
Because they are organized by the states, the centers have developed in different ways. Some are small operations focused on crime, while others are full-fledged criminal and counterterrorism operations. From 2004 to 2007, state and local governments received $254 million from the Department of Homeland Security in support of the centers, which are also supported by employees of the FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies. In some cases, they work with the U.S. Northern Command, the Pentagon operation involved in homeland security.
The centers have been criticized for being secretive, but authorities said that this is largely for security reasons. Activists want to know more about their activities, the kinds of information they collect and how the information is being used.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a lawsuit in Virginia last month seeking the release of records about communication among state fusion center officials and the departments of Homeland Security and Justice. Marc Rotenberg, the privacy center’s executive director, said his group was responding to a proposed state law that would sharply limit access to records about the fusion centers’ activity.
Sue Reingold, deputy program manager in the Information Sharing Environment office, a federal operation with a mandate to improve information sharing, said state and local officials “must have access to a broad array of classified and unclassified information” to perform their mission. But Reingold said that an “important part of this is appropriate training and oversight that is well understood and transparent to the public.”
“Fusion centers are vital to state and local efforts to fight crime, including terrorism,” she said.
The list includes a wide variety of data resources along with software that finds patterns and displays links among people.
Most of the centers have subscriptions to Accurint, ChoicePoint’s Autotrack or LexisNexis. These information brokers are Web-based services that deliver instant access to billions of records on individuals’ homes, cars, phone numbers and other information.
Some of the centers link to records of currency transactions and almost 5 million suspicious-activity reports filed by financial institutions with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Massachusetts and other states rely on LocatePlus, an information broker that claims that it provides “the most comprehensive cell phone, unlisted and unpublished phone database in the industry.” The state also taps a private system called ClaimSearch that includes a “nationwide database that provides information on insurance claims, including vehicles, casualty claims and property claims,” the document said.
The center in Ohio has access, through authorized users, to an FBI “secret level repository,” the document said.
Rhode Island reported that it has access, also through the FBI, to “Top Secret resources” such as “Proton, which allows queries of CIA databases,” the document shows. Officials at the Rhode Island State Police, FBI and CIA declined to discuss the system and the kinds of information it contains.
In addition to databases run by Entersect, Maryland fusion center analysts have access to wage and property records, corporate charters, utility records and a host of government files, including criminal justice information and traffic tickets. Jason Luckenbaugh, the center’s chief of staff, acknowledged concern about the government’s ability to tap into new sources of information. But he said the databases enable analysts to fight crime and protect against terrorism, and help local authorities do the same. “We’re not trying to threaten them in any way,” he said.
© 2008 The Washington Post
I can guarantee that in a short period of time everyone from insurance companies to credit card companies to cable TV companies etc will, after paying a fee, be using this information for anything they wish to market to you or to deny you.
“There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism” said Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell.”
actually, there might be too much. i’ve done searches on myself, my spouse and the company i work for and found some wildly inaccurate data (addresses, phone numbers etc.) this is stuff that should be easy to verify, but apparently nobody has bothered. there doesn’t seem to be any way to correct obvious errors even in databases that are accessible to the public, so i’m pretty sure (with no way to prove it) that the secret files are just as fouled up if not more so.
so: do the good faceless folk in charge expect to get good answers from bad data? or do they simply not care if mistakes are made and innocent people suffer thereby? based on their track record, i’m guessing the latter.
“Paranoia will strike deep
into your life it will creep
it starts when you’re always afraid,
step out of line and the man comes
to take you away”….
“For what its worth”….. Buffalo Springfield
George Orwell was right.
Enjoy your Fear….. KCT
I thought Poindexter’s TIA was killed. Only morphed.
We’re all marketable commodities and our every thought will soon be available for dissemination if the powers that be have it their way. Perhaps the underlying message is to get us to stop thinking; those of us that still do, that is.
Michael Rupert’s 9-11 conspiracy tome mentioned the existance of a program to control people’s thoughts. Is it television? By the way, I didn’t find “Crossing the Rubicon” far from believable. It had me squirming.
Insurance Claims? So what? Osama Bin Laden was involved in a FENDER BENDER? What the hell does a “Fusion Center” need with most of the information mentioned in this article, and therefore in the documnets collected by the paper of record? As if Al Qaeda would “File A Claim”..give me a break..
“OH NO! REAL ID ISN’T A NATIONAL ID PROGRAM…NAWW..WOULD WE DO THAT? THIS IS NOT A THREAT..WE KNOW EVERYHTING ABOUT YOU, WITHOUT A WARRANT, AND CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE..BUT THAT IS NOT A THREAT…”
Nother aspect to this is: IS THIS INFORMATION ALTERABLE?????? IT IS, I AM SURE! THE SAME TECHNOLOGY THAT ALLOWS THEM TO GET UNLISTED NUMBERS, CAN I AM SURE BE USED TO…REMOVE INFO, ALTER INFO, OR EVEN..CREATE AND INPUT FILES..AND SINCE YOU WILL NOT HAVE THE “RIGHT” TO VIEW THESE FILES IN THE EVEN THAT YOU ARE DISSAPEARED(BECAUSE REMEMBER, YOU WILL BE HELD WITHOUT CHARGES..) AND EVEN IF YOU DO MAKE IT TO A “COURT” DUE TO ‘NATIONAL SECURITY” YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO VIEW OR CONTEST THE FILES THAT HAVE PUT YOU INTO THIS SITUATUION…LIKE THE VOTING MACHINES..”SORRY WE CAN’T REVEAL OUR SECRET CODE TO THE PUBLIC…OH WELL..TRUST US..”
This has gone TOO FAR! it is time to do something, and if simply not PAYING FOR IT is too much to ask of you, then perhaps you can input some false info of your own into your “FILE” like a phony address ona credit card app that you do not intend to get, or a loan app. or a drivers license, or etc..etc..etc..keep your money in a safe, get your mail “GENERAL DELIVERY”, Drive a “Junker” that is registered to a friend..etc..etc..all risky..maybe? but freedom isn’t free folks…not by a long shot..and the only reason they are getting away with skirting FISA in this way and making local law agencies into defacto CIA field offices is that YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT…GIVING SUPPORT IN THE FORM OF MONEY…WHICH IS ALL THEY UNDERSTAND..MONEY AND TERROR..THEY BILL YOU AND FILL YOU FULL OF FEAR…PRETTY NIFTY TRICK…KIND OF LIKE…SHIT..ORGANIZED CRIME..EH WHAT?
AND AGAIN, YOU ARE FOOTING THE BILL, YOU ARE ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN BY GIVING TACIT SUPPORT IN THE FORM OF MILLIONS OF TAX DOLLARS. STOP PAYING FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF YOUR RIGHTS…DO NOT PAY..DO NOT PAY..OR LIVE IN FEAR.
ALSO! I think it is time for ERRONEOUS INFORMATION CAMPAIGNS..Why is this not happening? why is there not a “PRIVACY MOVEMENT” in this country to make it essentially impossible to trust the information in these databases?
This would really be quite easy to do. just use ‘GENERAL DELIVERY’ on your drivers license, as I will from now on…many other forms of throwing falty info out there into this, by DEFINITION authoritarian spy network.
Another aspect of this i would really like to see..is THE OUTING OF THE LITTLE LOCAL SNITCH PROGRAMS PERSONNEL..I think these people should be IDENTIFIED and EXPOSED..let them see how it feels to be POWERLESS TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY…see, we are allowing a “protected class” of citizens become established, the reality is already quite fixed that you CANNOT EVEN DEFEND YOURSELF AGAISNT POLICE ABUSE..PERIOD. TO DEFEND YOURSELF IS TO BE ARRESTED, EVEN IF A POLICE OFFICER IS BREAKING INTO YOUR HOME WITHOUT A WARRANT..as happened in Kentucky to a couple flying an UPSIDE DOWN AMERICAN FLAG..AND WHILE BREAKING INTO THEIR HOME BECAUSE THEY WOULD NOT LET HIM IN, THIS COP BUSTED HIS FINGER, THEY WERE ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH ‘ASSAULT ON A PEACE OFFICER’ FOR SIMPLY NOT ALLOWING THIS IDIOT INTO THEIR HOUSE…TO..WHAT? HE COULD NOT ARREST THEM FOR FLYING THE FLAG THIS WAY…SO WHAT WAS HE GOING TO DO? BUT NOPE..
So now we are seeing this whole FASCIST APPERATUS BEING TURNED IN THE DIRECTION OF THE “WHITE AL QAEDA” read: “EVERYONE” and nothing is being done about it.
Well..at least I am not paying for it..you are..i am not.
And, don’t forget to get as MUCH PHONY INFO INTO THE “MACHINE” AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN>EXPOSE THEM<< FOR THE LITTLE SNOOP FASCIST SCUMBAGS THAT THEY ARE…
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/
the pizza ad is so funny. i couldn’t hear it all for laughing so hard…..it’s too ridiculous.
After reading this article I can’t beleive that any would respond with comments. This is scary!
I damn knew it, when I posted about my daughter, then 17, recruiters got her through MY personal email address, later found info on my hard drive from Internet Details that I have in a file now proves the info, along with my personal password, not even AOL asks for that on an item from the Army in the details, and emails I received and sent to my Congressperson his GOV.ListServe with his info was contained within the Details of the Army Recruiters email SMTP paths. PIGS, I just wish they’d knock 1st, I really do not want my door ruined.
Hi DEPARTMENT!
I’d like to point out that my telephone and internet provider is 1 of 2-3 companies that told the administration
to “stuff it’ when asked to cooperate as regards data on
users data. BTW, that company is Qwest.
1984 is here, just a bit late.
Haven’t been able to verify this as yet, but I was told that someone’s passport is being delayed because of their anti-administration activities on the internet. Folks, things are getting pretty damn tight. How much will we take before we close down this country? When Betchel threatens to charge us for rainwater, will that be enough? It was for the Bolivians. Guess we are just not hungry enough as yet.
terrorism terrorism terrorism uh, ya…
just be sure you’re afraid of the people that you really need to be afraid of
Maine was one of the few states to hold out signing on to the Real ID act. Today, our Democrat governor, John Baldacci, signed half a million residents of Maine onto this next step in fascism.
Please send Gov. Baldacci a note thanking him for his part in bringing the Brown Shirts to a neighborhood near you.
http://maine.gov/governor/baldacci/contact/citizen_services/share_views.html
I think there is too much information readily available to anyone.
Suppose people cannot find work because of background checks? Is the government prepared to issue welfare to people because of.
Credit checks are unfair to the poor and middle class. Why should people pay extra money for car insurance because of bad credit? That extra money they have to pay is giving the priveleged rebates and such.
If you do not pay your car insurance it gets cancelled.
I feel like america is run by greedy pirates-you must watch your back at all times because banks and corporations are looking to steal your money.
Next time you hear someone blathering on about how we live in a “free” country, remind them of this little program.
I love this line: “There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism” said Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. “That’s what post-9/11 is about.”
No, that’s what the Gestapo was all about.
“Post 9/11″ is simply the new code phrase the authoritarians use for stripping us of our constitutional rights. It is a pretext, not a reason. One cannot achieve safety by sacrificing liberty, so the whole premise is stupid. Funny how we sanctify Franklin in this country but ignore one of his most important aphorisms.
Additionally, all this information can only be used after the fact. Same thing happens with surveillance cameras. They very rarely prevent crime. How many times does the news show a shooting that was recorded on a videocamera. It’s only useful as a post-facto, postmortem technique to catch criminals. But nobody can realistically make the argument that these technologies can *prevent* terrorism, but that is exactly the claim they are making.
Of course, the other main use for these systems (and I would argue the primary purpose) is to to identify dissenters who are thinking for themselves. These people will be considered enemies and get added to a special list. People like those on this site.
Fact of the matter is: this is what fascism looks like. Get ready for the camps. They will be opening soon…
From 2004 to 2007, state and local governments received $254 million from the Department of Homeland Security in support of the centers,
State and local governments can start moving toward rejecting federal money for anything and everything. State and local governments can become independent of the fed, and thereby build local economic/political power at the expense of the fed.
Well they are not going to have to look to far to get the information that people are not too happy about the intrusion into thier lives of people without the understanding of human needs and ethical conduct. In this case I think technology has surpassed the human capability of rational thought.
That anyone could think that this type of information collection is related to terrorism, is laughable. Anyone who wanted to send some kind of coded message to a conspiratorial cohort, would just put it in one of the usual spam messages currently clogging up our inboxes and send it to 10 million people. Only one or two would know what it really meant. The other 9,999,998 people would all be totally unaware. But given the volume of spam out there, there is no way any authority could track all of the recipients down. I mean even the real terrorists probably get real spam too, so how they gonna know? But the data being collected can be used for thepurpose of keeping the rest of us cowed and acquiescent.
It’s up to us to keep that from happening.
“If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear”
Of course, if the Bush administration just happens to becomve privy to what stocks and investments you are planning to buy, and shares this information with its buddies in big business, it’s just a happy coincidence.
Or if they just happen to tap into the Democrat Election Strategy, it is just GODS WILL