The successful FOIA lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that exposed DHS domestic surveillance abuses in 2007 and 2008 likely revealed the tip of the iceberg.
As discussed in the winter edition of The Public Eye, the Department of Homeland Security has erected a nationwide network of 72 state and urban area intelligence fusion centers which operates in virtual secret. It allows the federal government and local agencies to have access to more and more personal information about each of us using government and commercial databases. Due to this infrastructure, spying incidents like these can now become vastly more harmful to the individuals and groups subjected to surveillance.
Homeland Security plans to ensure that a DHS-employed analyst is housed in each fusion center by the end of 2010. Armed with a broad, ill-defined "all crimes, all hazards" mission and a renewed emphasis of combatting "homegrown extremism," fusion centers are in a position to police unpopular political thoughts and access and share vast amounts of personal information. The outcome will be a chilling of free speech for Americans across the political spectrum.
But for EFF's lawsuit, the public would not have been alerted to this misconduct by intelligence analysts who spied on and authored official reports on the Nation of Islam, abortion opponents and pro-choice activists, and a Muslim conference in Georgia. The President's Intelligence Oversight Board caught this misconduct, but kept it secret. It's clear that the system lacks adequate mechanisms for independent oversight. Congress needs to be pressured to fulfill its oversight role. So far, Congress has limited its focus to examining the efficacy of information-sharing and other Homeland Security practices. But the civil liberties abuses of the 1960s and 1970s are not a relic of the past. Congress and state legislatures must enact legislation that will provide thorough oversight and address the challenges that new technologies pose to our privacy and freedoms.
The Public Eye is published by Political Research Associates, a progressive think tank located in Somerville, MA.
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