Roach: I thought the original 'Top Secret America' articles were a phenomenal piece of reporting, and I am frankly a little astonished that I had no idea they had published more material recently.
There is very, very much information to sift through here in this latest piece. I think some of the charges in the article are fair, others are misguided, and a few make me chuckle as I realize how easy it is for a fusion center to take journalists for a ride. These places are not so slick and shiny as they can appear at first glance.
Let me start with the easy bits: I think the concern over the quality of 'expertise' about terrorism and Islam is easily the most legitimate and worrisome accusation in the piece. This guy is emblematic of the quality of training on 'Islam' available to PD's and fusion centers in the US:
Quote:
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"They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House - not on my watch!" he said. "My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders."
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It is scary, tragic stuff. A little knowledge, as they say, can be a dangerous thing. The discourse I hear among a lot of cops-turned-intel-analysts reminds me of nothing so much as the Islamophobia of the right-wing blogosphere.
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I am less impressed by the breathless declaration that 'military technologies' are being brought to bear on hapless civilians. This to me is like crying foul at NASA for conducting research that eventually led to home microwave ovens and Dippin' Dots. We should be debating the individual technologies; the question of whether they were originally developed for a theater of war is irrelevant.
I'm not sure I see a problem with LPR (license plate reader) technology, for example, as described in the article. If my car is on a list of stolen vehicles, I _want_ my local officers' squad cars to detect it when it drives by. I think this is a huge step _up_ from relying on individual beat cops to follow up on a bulletin. Actually I know that there are some much scarier applications of LPR going on than what the article reports, and I wonder why they did not focus on those... (basically, much less targeted, much more 'record all cars everywhere').
I may have to come back to this in the morning...