Maine's fusion center part of national spying on citizens

Press Herald - Fusion centers were created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to increase collaboration and intelligence gathering among all levels of law enforcement. The agencies received at least $461 million in federal funding last year and an estimated $1.4 billion through 2012, according to federal grant data. They have been widely criticized for violating Americans’ right to privacy and drafting intelligence reports on peace activists, political groups and, in one case, a California motorcycle gang’s distribution of a leaflet urging members to have a designated driver and cooperate if stopped by police.

U.S. Senate investigators and the Government Accounting Office have both issued critical reports about fusion centers, raising questions about the scope of their activities and whether the public’s money was being well spent.

The MIAC’s activities in Maine are largely covert. The agency is overseen by Maine State Police, but its budget, the information it collects and the exact makeup of its 12-member staff are not publicly disclosed.

Zach Heiden, legal director for the ACLU of Maine, said his organization has unsuccessfully tried to get more information about the fusion center. He said a request for public records the ACLU submitted under the Freedom of Access Act returned little useful information.

“I don’t think we got good answers,” he said. “We really don’t know much about it.”

That’s also been the experience with fusion centers in other states. In 2010, the ACLU of Illinois petitioned the courts to compel the Illinois State Police to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for records related to that state’s fusion center – the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center.

Nationally, the ACLU has advocated for changes to fusion centers. It contends they have ambiguous authority, operate in secrecy, are active in mining private citizens’ data and have put military personnel in charge of law enforcement activities – possibly violating a federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which limits how the federal government can use military personnel to enforce domestic law.

“Any time the government is collecting massive amounts of information about citizens, that raises concerns,” Heiden said. “While that information can be used for good, it can also be used in ways that undermine people’s rights, whether it’s rights to free speech or to associate. We know that fusion centers in other states have targeted groups that are using their First Amendment rights – the Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter – and that’s very troubling.”

He added, “Anytime that a government entity has an ill-defined mission – and the war on drugs is nothing if not an ill-defined mission – that creates potential problems.”