Cross-posted from The Ohm Project
Imagine that somewhere close to your local community there exists a secret computer center. Equipped with powerful mainframe computers and the database integrating powers of XML, this government-funded facility gathers data from thousands of sources including local, state and federal law enforcement, social welfare agencies, hospitals, banks, telephone companies, ISPs, computer search engines, private security companies, schools--essentially an endless list. With its massive computing power, this secret outpost is able to search and sift this data using vaguely defined criteria like "suspicious activity" in order to identify individuals for even closer scrutiny. Finally, this computer center dispenses the results of its analyses to local, state and federal law enforcement and to the military so that they can take action against the citizens tagged as threats.
Such a scenario is no longer the product of a paranoid, over-stimulated imagination. It is a reality called "fusion centers," forty of which have been established throughout the United States.
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