“The misconceptions are that we are conducting spying operations on U.S. citizens, which is of course not a fact. That is absolutely not what we do,” said Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis in a recent statement.
Davis has sought to quell a public outcry against fusion centers — secretive multi-jurisdictional intelligence facilities which house federal and local law enforcement agencies alongside military units and private security companies for the purposes of surveillance. The operations emanating from fusion centers are mostly secret and unregulated, causing civil liberties groups to claim that clandestine operations represent a clear violation of citizens’ constitutional rights to privacy.
There are roughly 77 fusion centers across the United States used by intelligence agencies to monitor the work of anti-war groups, activists and students deemed a possible “security threat.” Most facilities opened in 2003, during the Bush administration as part of the expansive war on terror waged domestically and abroad.
Davis stressed that his office places its focus on international plots, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information.”
Fusion centers have a history of reporting legal activity or petty crimes, such as putting political stickers in public bathrooms. In October 2012, the bipartisan Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations finished a two-year investigation on fusion centers, finding that the centers provided little useful intelligence information and likely violated constitutionally protected rights.
“In reality, the Subcommittee investigation found that the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS [Department of Homeland Security], and many produced no intelligence reporting whatsoever,” the report stated.
A separate legal challenge is already underway, spearheaded by The National Lawyers Guild (NLG). The NLG filed a lawsuit, challenging the constitutionality of spying from fusion centers in 2009.
“This has never been done before,” said Larry Hildes, an NLG attorney working on the lawsuit. “The U.S. government has spied on political dissidents throughout history and this particular plot lasted through two presidencies, but never before has a court said that we can challenge it the way we have.”
In a December 2012 ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the NLG challenge can proceed, marking the first time that citizens were given the go-ahead to sue the government for spy programs originating from fusion centers.
NLG attorney Larry Hildes filed the lawsuit on behalf of a group of anti-war activists in Washington state. Hildes claims that peaceful activist groups were infiltrated by John Towery, an employee at a fusion center inside a local Army base.
Towery allegedly joined local groups and gained the trust of the activists by posing as an anti-war activist. He spied on Students for a Democratic Society, the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, an anarchist bookstore in Olympia, Wash. and a bevy of other organizations. His investigations have not led to any arrests nor did he uncover any known information indicating that activists were involved in any subversive, illegal activity.
The lawsuit names Towery as well as the Army, Navy, Air Force, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.