Article, then # 9 , # 27 , and time permitting, read all comments.
Thanks, thouworm.
Posted on 04/19/2012 12:14:12 PM PDT by null and void
On March 1, the FBI stopped sharing vital terror intel with state and local officials without explanation.
Without making a public or private announcement, the FBI has ended critical intelligence sharing with all 77 law enforcement fusion centers nationwide. This policy was implemented less than two days after a top FBI official told Congress about the FBI’s extensive efforts to share intelligence with state and local partners.
On Monday, a state fusion center official told PJ Media:
The FBI has effectively put us out of business. We are right back to September 10.
Two other fusion center officials in other states confirmed the FBI’s new policy to PJ Media.
On March 1, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) stopped sharing Watch Encounter reports with the fusion centers. The Watch Encounter reports document incidents of individuals on terror watch lists having encounters with state or local law enforcement.
Until now, the Watch Encounter reports were forwarded to the fusion center responsible for the area where the encounter occurred. Since the TSC doesn’t share the terror watch lists with the fusion centers, the Watch Encounter reports were the only means that state officials had of knowing that someone on a terror watch list had either traveled to or lived in their area.
Forwarding the Watch Encounter reports to the fusion centers had proved helpful to the FBI, according to a fusion center official:
When we received these reports we would get the dash cam recordings from the department in question and even interview the officer who conducted the stop. We would then double-back to the FBI with the information. We also found that while the FBI field offices were supposed to be receiving these encounter reports, they were typically unaware that anything had happened.This official also claimed that the Watch Encounter reports are the core of the FBI’s intelligence-sharing program established after the 9/11 terror attacks:
These reports have been the life blood of the system. Now all of the billions of taxpayer dollars spent building fusion centers all across the country are essentially wasted.On February 28, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence Eric Velez-Villar appeared before the House Homeland Security Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee. The hearing focused on the FBI’s intelligence sharing with state, local, and tribal law enforcement ten years after the 9/11 attacks. Velez-Villar discussed the importance of the fusion centers in the FBI’s investigative process:
Fusion centers maximize our ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity. They assist the FBI by providing information made available by the combination of knowledge, expertise, and information within local law enforcement and homeland security agencies operating throughout the nation, and our participation allows us to provide a national perspective on regional threats and trends so we can better inform decision makers at all levels. The exchange of intelligence that takes place in fusion centers aids other intelligence and law enforcement organizations — including the JTTFs — in their investigative operations and serves as a critical tool for collaboration at all levels.Two days later, the sharing stopped. Said another fusion center official who spoke with PJ Media on Tuesday:
Congressional staffers are now investigating, and a key point has been raised in the investigation: it appears the FBI may be required to provide such intelligence to the fusion centers by presidential executive orders and federal law.After a couple of days our analysts noticed that the reports had stopped coming. No notice, no explanation.
Seems the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy had NOTHING to do with Fast and Furious (except in the delusional minds of it's creators), - ATF corruption, Secret Service meltdown etc. etc. Right wing wasn't there...
Might be time for officials to rethink that meme. IF there was a problem with ONE right winger - it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Look how they dealt with Zimmerman - and he was only a ‘right winger’ in their wettest of wet dreams...And then only for a short time...
Obama shut down my Fusion Center, and ate my dog.
Bottom line: very expensive, not used against the tiny number of potential terrorists, but instead used against ordinary citizens for ordinary reasons. If such systems are quietly discontinued, no one will miss them.
It *might* have been a good idea if there was an extensive network of terrorists and their supporters in the US, but by all accounts, there isn’t.
D'ya hear me, CIA / NSA / DHS / and so on? You guys simply go around the FBI and continue to do your level best to do good work.
Distributing firearms to death squads?
For the most part, yes. But it might not be just that. It is a power and money grab that the FBI may be saying NO to.
Looks like they got a whiff of the "Aspen Report."
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/pubs/HS-HPSCI-hearing-011812.pdf
Select quotes...
The growth of our expectations of domestic security, and the evolution of threats away from traditional state actors toward non-state entities -- drug cartels, organized crime, and terrorism are prominent examples -- suggest that the DHS intelligence mission should be threat agnostic.
(Everyone is suspect.)
In English it is saying "non-international." (hold that thought) Then they try to create the impression that there is a "gap" in the current intel apparatus.
In an age of budget constraints, pressure on DHS to focus on core areas of responsibility and capability -- and to avoid emphasis on areas performed by other entities -- may allow for greater focus on these areas of core competency while the agency sheds intelligence functions less central to the DHS mission. Analysts and managers in Washington’s sprawling intelligence architecture often speak of the value of competitive analysis -- analysts at different agencies, for example, looking at similar problems to ensure that we miss no new perspective, no potentially valuable data source."
Well, we certainly would not want that, lets go with a single source of information that is not questioned!
There remains room for this type of analysis, (Well that's mighty big of `em) but there are enough agencies pursuing the terrorist adversary to allow DHS to build a new analytic foundation that emphasizes data, analytic questions, and customer groups that are not the focus for other agencies. Analysis that helps private-sector partners better understand how to mitigate threats to infrastructure, for example, should win more resourcing (MONEY) than a focus on all-source analysis of general threats, such as work on assessing the perpetrators of attacks. Conversely, all-source analysis of terrorist groups and general terrorist trends should remain the domain of other intelligence agencies.
So, the blanket label of "terrorism" is used to justify this power grab. Above, terrorism is referenced as "non-state" i.e. international, to prove there is a gap in intelligence gathering. Below, there is a reversal of this in the "understand overseas terrorist incidents and translate them into analysis for the US."
This new approach to intelligence (new and improved!) -- serving local partners’ requirements, providing intelligence in areas (such as infrastructure) not previously served by intelligence agencies, (duh) and disseminating information by new means -- reflects a transition in how Americans perceive national security. For this reason, state/local agencies, as clients for DHS intelligence, should also be involved in the development of requirements for what kinds of intelligence on emerging threats would be most helpful, from changing tactics for smuggling aliens into the United States to how to understand overseas terrorist incidents and translate them into analysis for the US.
What part of "not previously served" did they not understand when they wrote "providing intelligence in areas (such as infrastructure) not previously served by intelligence agencies,"
Throughout the document there is the pervasive intrusion into state and local law enforcement agencies. there are no less that twelve direct references to this.
Local private sector (1)
Local partner (5)
local agency (3)
local police agency (1)
localized (1)
And they will "help" with the screening, hiring and training of all those "interfaces" with the State and local P.D's.
That is not the end of it. They want in on the private sector as well.
There are eight references to "private" with six as "private sector" and one each to "private partnership" and "private."
And here is the money quote... DHS customers will require information with limited classification; in contrast to most other federal intelligence entities, DHS should focus on products that start at lower classification levels, especially unclassified and FOUO, (For Official Use Only).
Unclassified and FOUO.
And that means ALL unclassified data. Credit cards, phone records, DOT info, school records, medical, internet, email, commercial business data, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G that would normally require your permission or a warrant.
Nice huh?
Perhaps the FBI got wind of an effort by little bammy's crew to go down that road. What with his monstrous E.O. expanding the Emergency Powers to "in peacetime and in times of national emergency" it is quite plausible.
Perhaps the FBI did not want their REAL intel being thrown in the pot with Unclassified and FOUO.
Perhaps someone in the FBI just said "OH HELL NO."
.
All accounts?
I guess you've missed all the reports of OTM invaders crossing our southern border.
Yeah, about that. I’ve long had an easy and inexpensive solution to any OTM crossing the border. It’s called a bounty, paid to Mexicans for any tips about OTM crossings, if and only if there is a payoff.
Oddly enough, it can be just a small reward, yet the southern border would be covered 24/7 by tens of thousands of hungry eyes. Even OTM smugglers would take pay for smuggling, then call the phone number to report them.
This is so inexpensive that it could even be done by a private individual, yet to effective that the border would be sealed to OTM crossers.
Even without this, the US has 16 major intelligence agencies and 100+ federal police organizations. They have long had all the tools they needed.
Much of the Patriot Act has been utterly wasted, or worse, applied against American citizens Bill of Rights protections for mundane purposes. Non-terrorism crime, or suspicion, and some are so broad that even non-suspects are investigated as “fishing expeditions” for nothing in particular.
In practice, only between 5-10% of the Patriot Act has any validity. The rest should be scrubbed.
Today would be a good day for an event. But so far all quiet on the western front. April 19.
Clearly we are too intimidated to do anything rowdy.
i was thinking the same thing...fusion centers compromised.
Article, then # 9 , # 27 , and time permitting, read all comments.
Thanks, thouworm.
April 20 has historically been a bad day for a lot of people.
So, now Muslims have taken over the FBI? There was a Muslim loving cadre of the FBI which raided the Hutaree Militia in Wisconsin in 2009.
Essentially Obama’s fascist tentacles are now invading our law enforcement institutions.They are NOT enforcing the laws, as per Eric Holder.They select what they like to enforce and follow presidential executive orders.
This is the dawn of fascism in America folks. MARK IT WELL.
Also coming up on the 1year anniversary of UBL’s demise.
Hmmm?? Something big in the works and they don’t want any leaks....Maybe they found the BC? /sarc
Just a drop in the bucket of waste from this admin.
Transparency my aunt fanny.
We are also coming up on the 1-year anniversary of the "release" of the online image of the "Obama" LFBC. That event was nuked out of the news cycle by the purported takedown of UBL.
"Hmmm?? Something big in the works and they don’t want any leaks....Maybe they found the BC? /sarc"
The press conference to present the findings of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Cold Case Posse was nuked out of the news cycle by the sudden death of Andrew Breitbart (wait till March 1st!) and the bomb scare at the Limbaugh residence. I wonder what will distract from the 1-year anniversary of the release of the forgery?
Thanks for the Ping, LucyT.
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