Sharing Information

In most cases sharing is a good thing. We teach our kids to share their candy. We applaud those who share their good luck with those less fortunate. But a lot depends on what is shared, who is doing the sharing, what is done with the shared item and whether everyone involved is aware that sharing is occurring. Using this caveat, one would have to say that the National Strategy for Information Sharing is not a good thing; it establishes state, local and regional “fusion centers” as a primary mechanism for the collection and dissemination of domestic intelligence.It shares our information without telling us and may use this information against us.

Like so many government initiatives of the 21^st century, this strategy is intended to protect us from the most evil thing in the world – terrorism. This evil can only be defeated if the government gathers enough information on all of us and shares it with other governmental bodies.

For example, the Los Angeles Police Department now has a policy to “gather, record, and analyze information of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism”. Some of your activities the police are interested in are

• - taking measurements
• - using binoculars
• - taking pictures or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value”
• - abandoning vehicle
• - drawing diagrams
• - taking notes
• - espousing extremist views

And they can pass this information on to the 800,000 law enforcement personnel in this country as constituting suspicious activity. Basically, the strategy defines suspicious activity as “observed behavior that may be indicative of intelligence gathering or pre-operational planning related to terrorism, criminal, or other illicit intention.” These observations of your local police department may then be shared with police and security departments across the country whether or not there is any sort of reasonable suspicion has been established.

And, state by state, laws are being passed to exempt these files from the Freedom of Information Act.

1984 has been here for a long time and its getting more and more pervasive.