[Infowarrior] - Va. Domestic Intelligence Center Sued for Info

[Richard Forno]

Va. Domestic Intelligence Center Sued for Info
By Ryan Singel EmailMarch 24, 2008 | 7:55:48 PMCategories: Sunshine and
Secrecy, Surveillance

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/va-domestic-int.html

A D.C. privacy group that is curious about the activities of a Virginia
domestic intelligence center filed a government sunshine lawsuit Friday,
after Virigina's so-called fusion center rebuffed its requests for documents
about what the center was doing.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center's complaint (.pdf) asks a Virginia
judge to force state police to cough up records about meetings with the
Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, especially in regards to
discussions about how the center would or would not comply with state open
government laws. Virginia state police denied the request, saying the
documents were "criminal intelligence data."

Fusion centers are relatively new creatures on the homeland security scene
and are intended to allow local and state police to combine their criminal
and intelligence information with information shared by government agencies.

The idea is to break the chokehold the feds have had on intelligence and to
find ways to integrate beat cops information with the feds' intel. Private
companies, such as banks and chemical plants, are also expected to funnel
reports of suspicious information to the centers, which can then look for
patterns and run down leads.

While the original idea was to focus on anti-terrorism, both states and the
federal government are now touting an all-encompassing "alll threats, all
hazards" model. That means the centers would focus not just on
anti-terrorism, but also gangs, immigration, floods and common crimes --
under the justification that these other areas sometimes have links to
terrorism.

Privacy groups are cold on fusion centers, the latest growth sector in the
homeland security industrial complex. There are now some 50 such centers
around the country. The feds recently attempted, with little media interest,
to tout their cooperation with the centers as a symbol of the change in how
Washington operates after 9/11.

One of the main objections of groups like EPIC and the ACLU is that as
information gets fused, it's not clear what privacy laws apply.

Do state open-access rules apply? What about the federal Privacy Act? Will
state rules only apply to data collected by states? How does one clear one's
name if a center adds false information to their database and then share it
with the feds and all the other states?

EPIC is focusing on Virgina, since the legislature is considering
legislation that would exempt the fusion center from the state's open
government rules.