Via Secrecy News: “There is, more often than not, insufficient purely ‘terrorist’ activity to support a multi-jurisdictional and multi-governmental level fusion center that exclusively processes terrorist activity.” This is from a Naval Postgraduate School master’s thesis entitled: “An Examination of State and Local Fusion Centers and Data Collection Methods.”

Though they arose to counter the terrorism threat, “fusion centers” will seek out other things to do. Programs like these are born of slogans — “connect the dots” — “information sharing” — rather than sound security thinking. In a TechKnowledge piece last year titled, “Fusion Centers: Leave ‘Em to the States,” I juxtaposed the active fusion center in Massachusetts with the hair-on-fire overreaction of the Boston Police to a guerrilla marketing campaign featuring stylized Lite-Brites.