Tracy Rosenberg#Fusioncenters now issuing threat warnings about people who oppose #datacenters in their communities. #CaLeg https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism/?ref=dispatch.techoversight.org
Oakland Privacy#Fusioncenters now issuing threat warnings about people who oppose #datacenters in their communities. https://www.wired.com/story/us-law-enforcement-warns-of-anti-tech-extremism/?ref=dispatch.techoversight.org
rexi(begs the question *what is the current state of things* with #FusionCenters under the second Trump admin)
from Wed 2 Oct 2019:
"federally sponsored anti-terrorism fusion center in Oregon assisted a taskforce monitoring protest groups"
Miguel Afonso Caetano"From a statewide counterterrorism surveillance and intelligence-sharing hub in Ohio, a warning went out to administrators at the Ohio State University: “Currently, we are aware of a demonstration that is planned to take place at Ohio State University this evening (4/25/2024) at 1700 hours. Please see the attached flyers. It is possible that similar events will occur on campuses across Ohio in the coming days.”
Founded in the wake of 9/11 to facilitate information sharing between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, fusion centers like Ohio’s Statewide Terrorism Analysis and Crime Center, or STACC, have become yet another way for law enforcement agencies to surveil legally protected First Amendment activities. The 80 fusion centers across the U.S. work with the military, private sector, and other stakeholders to collect vast amounts of information on American citizens in a stated effort to prevent future terror attacks.
In Ohio, it seemed that the counterterrorism surveillance hub was also keeping close tabs on campus events.
It wasn’t just at Ohio State: An investigative series by The Intercept has found that fusion centers were actively involved in monitoring pro-Palestine demonstrations on at least five campuses across the country, as shown in more than 20,000 pages of documents obtained via public records requests exposing U.S. universities’ playbooks for cracking down on pro-Palestine student activism.
As the documents make clear, not only did universities view the peaceful, student-led demonstrations as a security issue — warranting the outside police and technological surveillance interventions detailed in the rest of this series — but the network of law enforcement bodies responsible for counterterror surveillance operations framed the demonstrations in the same way."
https://theintercept.com/2025/11/21/fusion-centers-gaza-student-protests-surveillance/
#USA #Biden #Trump #Universties #HigherEd #Gaza #Palestine #FusionCenters #Surveillance #PoliceState #StudentActivism
DoomsdaysCWSo yeah. #Biden and crew did NOTHING to stop #FusionCenters and other policies that #Trump is now using and abusing! And no thanks to #Obama for helping to expand presidential powers like #IndefiniteDetentionClause!
https://kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/113489577026000756
https://kolektiva.social/@DoomsdaysCW/112061266766251320
#NDAA #ExpandedPowers #BlueLeaks #JRIC #USPresidency #NationalEmergency #Drones #HR9495 #Terrorists #Activists #USPol #BorderEmergency
DoomsdaysCW (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 image I found the cartoon! It was by cartoonist #MattBors from 2016 (right after Trump's election). #NDAA #ExpandedPowers #USPresidency #NationalEmergency #Drones #HR9495 #Terrorists #Activists #MattBors #USPol #BorderEmergency
WTF!!! #DHS Tells #Police That Common #Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’
DHS is urging law enforcement to treat even #skateboarding and #livestreaming as signs of violent intent during a protest, turning everyday behavior into a pretext for police action.
By Dell Cameron, Jul 10, 202
"The #DepartmentOfHomelandSecurity is urging local police to consider a wide range of protest activity as violent tactics, including mundane acts like riding a #bike or livestreaming a police encounter, WIRED has learned.
"WIRED has made this article free for all to read because it is primarily based on reporting from Freedom of Information Act requests [#FOIA]. Please consider subscribing to support our journalism.
"Threat bulletins issued during last month’s '#NoKings' #protests warn that the US government’s aggressive immigration raids are almost certain to accelerate domestic unrest, with DHS saying there’s a 'high likeliness' more Americans will soon turn against the agency, which could trigger #confrontations near federal sites.
"Blaming intense media coverage and backlash to the US military deployment in #LosAngeles, DHS expects the #demonstrations to 'continue and grow across the nation' as #protesters focused on other issues shift to #immigration, following a broad 'embracement of #AntiICE messaging.'
"The bulletins—first obtained by the national security nonprofit #PropertyOfThePeople through public records requests—warn that officers could face assaults with fireworks and improvised weapons: #paint-filled fire extinguishers, smoke grenades, and projectiles like #bottles and #rocks.
"At the same time, the guidance urges officers to consider a range of #nonviolent behavior and common #ProtestGear—like #masks, #flashlights, and #cameras—as potential precursors to violence, telling officers to prepare 'from the point of view of an adversary.'
"Protesters on #bicycles, #skateboards, or even 'on foot' are framed as potential 'scouts' conducting reconnaissance or searching for 'items to be used as weapons.' #Livestreaming is listed alongside '#doxxing' as a 'tactic' for 'threatening' police. Online posters are cast as ideological #recruiters—or as participants in 'surveillance sharing.'
"One list of 'violent tactics' shared by the Los Angeles–based Joint Regional Intelligence Center—part of a post-9/11 fusion network—includes both protesters’ attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police. The memo also alleges that face recognition, normally a tool of law enforcement, was used against officers.
"Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union [#ACLU], says the government has no business treating #constitutionally protected activities—like #observing or #documenting police—as threats.
"#DHS did not respond to a request for comment."
Read more:
https://www.wired.com/story/dhs-tells-police-that-common-protest-activities-are-violent-tactics/
#ACAB #FusionCenters #Fascism #Authoritarianism #Resistance #Journalism #PoliceState #CriminalizingDissent #Protestors #Protest #USPol #CriminalizingProtest #Orwell #BigBrother #DoublePlusUngood #SurveillanceState #NaziPatrol #NineteenEightyFour
Columbus - Feeds
Inside the Ohio State University response to the 2024 pro-Palestine protests – Matter News
Emails, text messages and memoranda recently obtained via records request show how Ohio State leadership coordinated with law enforcement agencies to respond to the largest protests the campus had seen since the Vietnam War.
5DNEWS PLAYSETThomas Jefferson thought of policing in terms of “constables.” Now police are bristling with military technology and are a standing army that occupies the United States. The irony: consider that Jefferson thought that even a national military was unnecessary. #Jefferson #GreatBooks
There is no “low” hometown. There is HSAC. The sirens you hear off in the distance are an agent’s yapping dog that is just staring around to take a bite out of our kids! Starving people are called criminals while jackboot Responders collect tax as comfortably protected military child-molesters. They get all the tech; we get all the poverty. What we need is not Federal slimming so much as a reduction in the predatory and wasteful spending that goes to abusive local departments.
Tangles, WebLoc, #geofencing #FusionCenters
Carpenter V. United States (2018)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_Council
(DHS site)
https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/dhs-8th-anniversary-fact-sheet.pdf
banks more dangerous than "standing armies" as if that was a given
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-10-02-0053
VICTORY! #Maine Increases Transparency and Accountability for its #FusionCenter
By Matthew Guariglia
June 26, 2023
"In a major step for reigning in the unaccountable power of #FusionCenters, the Maine state House and Senate have passed HP 947, An Act to Increase the Transparency and Accountability of the Maine Information and Analysis Center. The bill creates an Auditor position within the Office of the Attorney General whose job it is to conduct regular reviews of the Main Information and Analysis Center’s (MIAC) activities, to keep records, and to share information with the public. The bill also makes any information MIAC shares with private entities a public record and therefore accessible to the public.
"This bill comes after a years-long concerted effort by Maine activists and concerned citizens who have been fighting for accountability in how MIAC collects, shares, and utilizes information about Mainers. In June 2021, a bill that would have defunded the fusion center entirely passed 88-54 out of the Maine House of Representatives before being defeated in the state senate.
"Fusion centers are yet another unnecessary cog in the surveillance state—and one that serves the intrusive function of coordinating surveillance activities and sharing information between federal law enforcement, the national security surveillance apparatus, and local and state police, with little to no oversight. Across the United States, there are at least 78 fusion centers that were formed by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the War on Terror and the rise of post-9/11 mass surveillance. Since their creation, fusion centers have been hammered by politicians, academics, and civil society groups for their ineffectiveness, dysfunction, mission creep, and unregulated tendency to veer into policing political views. As scholar Brendan McQuade wrote in his book Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision:
"'On paper, fusion centers have the potential to organize dramatic surveillance powers. In practice however, what happens at fusion centers is circumscribed by the politics of law enforcement. The tremendous resources being invested in counterterrorism and the formation of interagency intelligence centers are complicated by organization complexity and jurisdictional rivalries. The result is not a revolutionary shift in policing but the creation of uneven, conflictive, and often dysfunctional intelligence-sharing systems.”
"An explosive 2023 report from Rutgers University’s Center for Security, Race and Rights also provides more evidence of why these centers are invasive, secretive, and dangerous. In the report, researchers documented how New Jersey’s fusion center leveraged national security powers to spy almost exclusively on Muslim, Arab, and Black communities and push an already racially biased criminal justice system into overdrive through aggressive enforcement of misdemeanor and quality of life offenses.
"After a series of leaks that revealed communications from within police departments, fusion centers, and law enforcement agencies across the country, MIAC came under particular scrutiny for sharing dubious intelligence generated by far-right wing social media accounts with local law enforcement. Specifically, MIAC helped perpetuate disinformation that stacks of bricks and stones had been strategically placed throughout a Black Lives Matter protest as part of a larger plan for destruction, and caused police to plan and act accordingly. This was, to put it plainly, a government intelligence agency spreading fake news that could have deliberately injured people exercising their First Amendment rights. This controversy unfolded shortly after a whistleblower lawsuit from a state trooper that alleged the fusion center routinely violated civil rights.
"When it comes to fighting these dangerous relics of the War on Terror, activists in Maine are leading the way for the rest of the country. EFF will continue to support organizations and local groups willing to take on fusion centers in their legislatures. Congratulations to the hard-working activists and concerned residents in Maine."
#ACAB #Surveillance #EFF #MIAC #Transparency #FirstAmendment #DHS #WarOnTerror
VICTORY! Maine Increases Transparency and Accountability for its Fusion Center
In a major step for reigning in the unaccountable power of fusion centers, the Maine state House and Senate have passed HP 947, An Act to Increase the Transparency and Accountability of the Maine Information and Analysis Center. The bill creates an Auditor position within the Office of the Attorney...
US police agencies took intelligence directly from #IDF, leaked files show
Analysis of #BlueLeaks trove also shows police received training on domestic ‘Muslim extremists’ from pro-Israel groups
by Jason Wilson
Fri 8 Dec 2023
"Hacked police files show US law enforcement agencies for decades received analysis of incidents in the Israel-Palestine conflict directly from the Israeli Defense Forces and Israeli thinktanks, training on domestic 'Muslim extremists' from pro-Israel non-profits, and surveilled social media accounts of #ProPalestine #activists in the US.
"The Guardian’s analysis of documents from the BlueLeaks trove of internal law enforcement documents found no indication that this was balanced by information from other Middle Eastern sources or US Muslim community groups. Nor is there any indication that pro-Israel activists were subject to any specific scrutiny.
"At a time of polarized reactions to the Israel-Hamas war in #Gaza, the analysis raises questions about the scope of police intelligence-gathering in the US and the influence of Israel and its supporters on those efforts, and how this has shaped the treatment of activists and social movements, especially those who are pro-Palestinian.
[...]
"The BlueLeaks trove was obtained and released by self-described hacktivists in June 2020. It contains material from more than 200 law enforcement agencies, including intelligence material disseminated by federally sponsored umbrella bodies such as fusion centers and high-intensity drug-trafficking area (#Hidta) programs."
Original article:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/08/us-police-agencies-idf-files-blueleaks
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/lA5DN