A report by the United States Senate, PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR AND INVOLVEMENT IN STATE AND LOCAL FUSION CENTERS (link to page with actual report), was described this way in the New York Times coverage:
One of the nation’s biggest domestic counterterrorism programs has failed to provide virtually any useful intelligence, according to Congressional investigators.
Their scathing report, to be released Wednesday, looked at problems in regional intelligence-gathering offices known as “fusion centers” that are financed by the Department of Homeland Security and created jointly with state and local law enforcement agencies.
The report found that the centers “forwarded intelligence of uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism.”
The investigators reviewed 610 reports produced by the centers over 13 months in 2009 and 2010. Of these, the report said, 188 were never published for use within the Homeland Security Department or other intelligence agencies. Hundreds of draft reports sat for months, awaiting review by homeland security officials, making much of their information obsolete. And some of the reports appeared to be based on previously published information or facts that had on long since been reported through the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
What is remarkable about a link to a page with the actual report?
After reading the New York Times article, I looked for a link in the article to the report. Nada. Zip. The null string. No link.
Searching over news reports from other major news outlets, same result.
Searching the US Senate, PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS website, at least as of 5:00 AM Eastern Standard time on October 3, 2012, fails to produce the report.
We aren’t lacking the “semantic web.”
There is a lack of linking to information sources. Links empower the reader to make their own judgements.
I expect “shoddy reporting” from the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t expect it from the New York Times. Or other major news outlets.
The report will be a “brief flash in the pan.” The news cycle will move onto the latest political gaffe or fraud, just as DHS folk move onto other ineffectual activities.
Would be nice to link up names, events, etc., from the report, to past and future mentions of the same people and events.
Imagine Senator Levin asking: “This is your fifth appearance on questionable spending of government funds, in four separate agencies, under two different administrations?”
Accountability and transparency, a topic maps double shot.
Speaking of media collusion with power, here’s a story that would, if widely reported, be a jaw-dropper for most Americans, in which Ahmedinejad meets with a bunch of orthodox Jews in New York:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bCw-oWp1wf8
There’s a David Duke video that’s attached to it. I have little use for David Duke, at least historically, and I hate this video of his, but he makes unreported points that I have suspected are true for many years. All he does is to connect some dots that are obviously connectable, but which are never connected in the media. Talk about data fusion that doesn’t happen…
Powerful people actually don’t want data fusion to occur. Instead, they want to be seen to be trying to do it. If they can spend public money on the effort, that’s good for them. The more, the better, both for public perception and for profit.
Comment by Steve Newcomb — October 3, 2012 @ 8:18 am
Sorry for the delay, I wanted to check on the “banned video” before approving your comment.
I think “banned” is too strong a term to use. The news media failing to run with an amateur video posted to YouTube doesn’t constitute being “banned.”
It could be the news media evaluated the news worthiness of a private meeting to which the media was not invited, without any known participants other than Ahmedinejad, and found it lacking. Knowing more about the other participants would allow viewers to evaluate the significance of the meeting.
Perhaps that is why the main stream media was not invited? Too many questions?
I am confident there are those who would prefer that data fusion not occur. Money launderers dislike it. As do securities fraudsters. And politicians.
But I am equally confident that their avoidance of data fusion is more due to lack of effort on our part than any particular skill on theirs.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — October 4, 2012 @ 5:03 am