Pulitzer Prize winner 07
The ACLU has recently criticised a fusion centre in Texas, after one of the centre’s Prevention Awareness Bulletins was leaked on the internet. The Department of Homeland Security provides funding and personnel to fusion centres throughout America. There are currently 58 of these centres. At the moment, 27 of them can use the Homeland Security Data Network, which lets information flow securely to each state from the federal government. It also gives staff at the centres online access to the National Counterterrorism Center. It is widely recognised that the different intelligence agencies failed to accurately predict and prevent 9/11, largely because they failed to put together different pieces of information held by different agencies. (I can recommend two books on this topic: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright, and The Man Who Warned America by Murray Weiss.) These fusion centres are an attempt to address this and to prevent, or at the very least provide an early warning of, any “natural, accidental and intentional disasters”. The North Central Texas Fusion System is used not only by regional homeland security, but also by Texan law enforcement and emergency services. The centre sends out a Prevention Awareness Bulletin each week to over 1500 local users. In the opinion of the ACLU, the content of a recent PAB warranted an attack on both the North Central Texas Fusion System, and all the other fusion centres throughout America.
NCTFS
In the bulletin in question, it’s argued that organisations like CAIR and Hizb ut-Tahrir have promoted Islamic issues in America for some time, but that groups such as these want to go beyond what might reasonably be expected of a minority group and have their religous beliefs declared authoritative and binding throughout the country. This is in accordance with the ideology promoted by Islamists like Sayyid Qutb. The ACLU though, considers keeping an eye on organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and CAIR to be “discrimination against Muslims”. Rebecca Bernhardt, the ACLU Texas Policy Director, says the fusion centre in Texas is “targeting religious minorities and groups with unpopular political opinions”. In an “executive summary” on the ACLU website, they claim there are “serious questions” about whether fusion centres can prevent acts of terrorism, and whether they should be funded by the American taxpayer “without properly assessing whether they serve a necessary purpose”.
The ACLU goes on to say that “there’s nothing wrong” with intelligence being shared between different agencies. They acknowledge that this is “very much needed”. If the ACLU acknowledge that it’s “very much needed”, how can they then turn around and ask if it’s necessary? Hasn’t the need to share information between different government agencies already been assessed? Isn’t that why we know it’s needed? Do the ACLU have any “serious questions” about the legitimacy of American fusion centres?
To suggest, as Rebecca Bernhardt does, that if one belongs to a minority religious group then one will be targeted by the government, is insubstantial scaremongering of the lowest kind. And the suggestion that anyone holding unpopular political views will be targeted along with Wiccans and Buddhists is no better. The analysts at the North Central Texas Fusion System appear to know that Islamists are a religious minority with unpopular political opinions. When it comes to the religion of peace, the two go together. And if Islamists are trying to advance their agenda in America, there could well be trouble on the horizon. Given the ideas that drive Islamism, that’s not an unreasonable claim to make at all.
The ACLU don’t want fusion centres in America to be “misdirected” and say they’re concerned about the American authorities being able to assemble “a very detailed portrait of our lives” then using that to “profile how suspicious we look”. But if the political views of Islamist groups in America are based on the thinking of Islamists like Sayyid Qutb, who once said that “Islam has a mandate to order the whole of human life”, then it’s only right that fusion centres and intelligence agencies direct their attention towards those Islamist groups, and assemble a detailed portrait of what they’re doing.
It is the job of American fusion centres and law enforcement agencies to identify and catch suspects before they get the chance to commit acts of murder and terror. One might say that’s their purpose. And yes, it’s necessary.
