It gets scarier every today. Yesterday the AP reported that a Senate study on homeland security spending has concluded that so-called federal "fusion centers", a multi-billion dollar information-sharing network used by law enforcement agencies of all levels (created in the aftermath of 9/11 of course), have
improperly collected information about innocent Americans. From the AP:
What began as an attempt to put local, state and federal officials in
the same room analyzing the same intelligence has instead cost huge
amounts of money for data-mining software... The report underscores a reality of post-9/11 Washington: National security programs tend to grow, never shrink, even when their money and manpower far surpass the actual subject of terrorism.
The federal government's appetite for data mining knows no bounds. I reported back in April that William Binney, former technical director of the National Security Agency, made the bold claim that his prior employer
collects, stores, and data mines personally-identifiable electronic communications of American citizens using a system he helped create. Filmmaker Laura Poitras made a
must-see documentary about the NSA's supposed program, known as "Stellar Wind", and
received reprisal from the federal government because of it. Now it appears that the feds' data mining efforts are assisted by local and state law enforcement agencies, knowingly or not.
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