Fusion Centers Neg – Wave 2 - BT
Good job to Manu, Cameron, Dhruv, Rafael, John, and Anusha who worked on this
case neg.
Shout out to Shivy the Enforcer and Jack the Hanger Oner!
Topicality
Its
‘Its’ is a possessive pronoun showing ownership
Glossary of English Grammar Terms, ‘5
(http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/possessive-pronoun.html)
Mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, theirs are the possessive
pronouns used to substitute a noun and to show
possession or ownership. EG. This is your disk and that's mine. (Mine substitutes the word disk and shows that it belongs
to me.)
Violation – Aff decreases involvement in state surveillance, but doesn’t
decrease federal surveillance.
Fusion centers are owned and operated by states
DHS 15 [Department of Homeland Security, “State and Major Urban Area Fusion
Centers”, DHS.gov, 7/6/15, http://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-areafusion-centers] MG
State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) serve as focal points within the state
and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of
threat-related information between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and
private sector partners. Located in states and major urban areas throughout the country, fusion centers are uniquely situated
to empower front-line law enforcement, public safety, fire service, emergency response, public health, critical infrastructure
protection, and private sector security personnel to understand local implications of national intelligence, thus enabling local
officials to better protect their communities. Fusion centers provide interdisciplinary expertise and situational awareness to
inform decision-making at all levels of government. They conduct analysis and facilitate information sharing while assisting
law enforcement and homeland security partners in preventing, protecting against, and responding to crime and terrorism.
Fusion centers are owned and operated by state and local entities with support from
federal partners in the form of deployed personnel, training, technical assistance, exercise support, security clearances,
connectivity to federal systems, technology, and grant funding.
This is a voting issue –
a) Limits – justifies an affirmative about any federal budget line-item that
assists state and local governments with surveillance – undermines in-depth
education
b) Effects illegit – explodes topic and justifies bi-directionality – causes
impossible negative research burden, undermining fairness – this is an
independent voter
A2: C/I – Federal funding/coordination = its
Federal funding and coordination doesn't determine ownership
Paget 7 – JD, long and widely recognized as one of this country's leading
practitioners of environmental law and litigation
(David, ALI-ABA COURSE OF STUDY MATERIALS Environmental Impact
Assessment: NEPA and Related Requirements Cosponsored by the Environmental
Law Institute, Lexis)//BB
I. Issue¶ - At what point does federal participation in a project contemplated by a
nonfederal entity, such as a private entity or a state or local government, federalize the
action and render the entire project subject to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act ("NEPA")?¶ The way in which an action is defined determines the scope of the project for federal purposes.¶ - Nonfederal actions are not
subject to NEPA requirements. Save the Bay, Inc. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 610 F.2d 322, 326 (5th Cir. 1980);
Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Assoc. v. Gettysburg College, 799 F. Supp. 1571, 1577 (M.D. Pa. 1992).¶ - Federal agencies
are subject to NEPA requirements if a proposed project involves a "major federal action significantly affecting the quality of
the human environment." 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2) (C).¶ - If subject to NEPA requirements, the federal agency must conduct an
Environmental Assessment ("EA") and issue a Finding of No Significant Impact ("FONSI") or an Environmental Impact
Statement ("EIS").¶ - The NEPA scope of analysis is significant because:¶ - It is frequently determinative of the need for an
EIS.¶ - Because NEPA applies to at least the federal component of a proposal, the greater the "federalization" of the action the
greater the likelihood of significant environmental impacts.¶ - Inclusion of the nonfederal portion of a proposed project as part
of the NEPA scope of analysis often converts a typical FONSI into an EIS.¶ - Federal agencies must comply with the alternatives
analysis in Section 102(2) (E) even if they do not have to prepare an EIS. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2) (E); Hanly v. Kleindienst (II), 471
F.2d 823 (2d Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 908 (1973).¶ - Inclusion of the nonfederal portion of a proposed project as part
of the NEPA scope of analysis increases the scope of the alternatives analysis because the federal agency must consider
alternatives to the entire project, not just alternatives to the federal portion of the proposed project.¶ - Inclusion of the
nonfederal component of a proposal as part of the overall federal action may trigger other additional provisions of federal law,
such as¶ - § 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 470f.¶ - Floodplain Management, Executive Order No.
11988.¶ - Protection of Wetlands, Executive Order No. 11990 (does not apply to issuance by federal agencies of permits to
private parties for activities involving wetlands on nonfederal property).¶ - If more than one federal agency is involved in a
project proposed by a nonfederal entity, the federal agencies must consider the cumulative federal involvement in
determining the scope of the NEPA analysis. See 40 C.F.R. §§ 1508.7 & 1508.25(a) & (c).¶ II. Common Situations Involving the
"Small Handle" Issue¶ - Nonfederal actions that require federal permits or approvals.¶ - Army Corps of Engineers' (the
"Corps") issuance of a permit pursuant to Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, 33 U.S.C. § 403, for work in navigable
waters of the United States and/or pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1344, for discharges of fill or
dredged material into waters of the United States (including federal wetlands).¶ - Construction of marina associated with
upland development (e.g., commercial or residential).¶ - Construction of marina associated with entertainment facilities.¶ Components of a residential or commercial development are in both upland and regulated waters.¶ - Other combinations of
in-water activity and upland activity:¶ - Utility lines.¶ - River or wetlands crossing or filling as part of a larger development or
transportation project.¶ - Discharge outfalls from upland industrial plant.¶ - Secretary of the Interior approval of Indian
contracts.¶ - Local road improvements associated with highway improvements requiring Federal Highway Administration
("FHWA") approvals or funding.¶ - Nonfederal actions eligible for federal assistance.¶ - Mass transit systems.¶ - Highway
construction.¶ - Housing developments.¶ - HUD mortgage insurance.¶ - HUD funding for a portion of a project.¶ III. How To
Determine When A Nonfederal Action Has Been Federalized¶ - There are no clear standards for determining the point at
which federal involvement transforms a nonfederal project into federal action. United States v. Southern Florida Water
Management District, 28 F.3d 1563, 1572 (11th Cir. 1994). "The touchstone of major federal activity constitutes a federal
agency's authority to influence nonfederal activity." Id.; Sierra Club v. Hodel, 848 F.2d 1068, 1089 (10th Cir. 1988); see 40
C.F.R. § 1508.18. Put another way, does the federal agency's involvement provide it with the ability to influence materially the
environmental impacts of the planned non-federal activity?¶ - The Corps follows its own NEPA regulations. In 1980, the Corps
published a version of regulations that did not specify how it should determine the scope of its NEPA analysis when issuing
permits for actions combining both federal and nonfederal components. In the same year, the Fifth and Eighth Circuits decided
to limit this scope to the federally controlled or regulated aspects of such projects. These immediately following Fifth and
Eighth Circuit seminal cases addressed the "small handle" issue and provide the essential historical antecedents for the
promulgation of the Corps' Scope of Analysis regulations, 33 C.F.R. § 325, App. B(7)(b) (1994).¶ - Winnebago Tribe of
Nebraska v. Ray ("Winnebago"), 621 F.2d 269 (8th Cir. 1980). A nonfederal proposal was made to construct a 67-mile power
line. Approximately 1.25 miles of the 67-mile power line would cross the Missouri River, triggering the need for a Corps
Section 10 permit, pursuant to 33 U.S.C. § 403. Before issuing the permit, the Corps prepared an EA on the impact of the 1.25
mile river crossing. The EA concluded that there were no significant environmental impacts associated with the river crossing;
thus, an EIS was not required.¶ Plaintiff then commenced a lawsuit, alleging noncompliance with NEPA because the Corps did
not assess the environmental effects of the entire 67-mile power line. Plaintiff argued that without the Section 10 permit, the
power line would not be built; therefore, the Corps had sufficient control over the proposal to require an environmental
analysis of the entire transmission line project, which would undoubtedly require an EIS.¶ The District Court denied the
plaintiff's request for a permanent injunction to bar the construction of the proposed power line. The plaintiff appealed from
that decision, arguing, inter alia, that the District Court had erred in holding that the issuance of a Corps permit to cross the
Missouri River was not a "major federal action" within the meaning of NEPA.¶ In reviewing the District Court decision, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ("Court") employed both an "enablement" (or legal control) and a factual
(or veto control) test in determining whether the Corps should have considered the environmental impacts of the entire
project. The Court stated that in "enablement" cases, "federal action is a legal condition precedent to accomplishment of an
entire nonfederal project." Id. at 272. The Court found that 33 U.S.C. § 403 was too narrow to be construed as a grant of legal
control over the entire project.¶ The Court then looked to the Corps' factual, or veto control, over the project. In applying this
test, it articulated three factors to aid in determining whether the Corps' factual control required an environmental
assessment of the entire project:¶ (1) the degree of discretion exercised by the agency over the federal portion of the project;¶
(2) whether the federal government has given any direct financial aid to the project; and¶ (3) whether "the overall federal
involvement with the project [is] sufficient to turn essentially private action into federal action."¶ Id. The Court stated that,
although the Corps had broad discretion to assess environmental impacts, the discretion had to be exercised within the scope
of the agency's authority. Under Section 10, the Corps had authority to consider the environmental impacts regarding only
areas in and affecting navigable waters. Thus, the Corps had no authority to consider the environmental impacts of the entire
proposed 67-mile power line. The Court also found that the federal government was not providing any direct or indirect
funding for the project. Therefore, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Corps did not have sufficient control or
responsibility to require an environmental assessment of the entire project.¶ - Save the Bay, Inc. v. United States Army Corps
of Engineers ("Save the Bay"), 610 F.2d 322 (5th Cir. 1980). A nonfederal proposal to construct and operate a massive titanium
dioxide manufacturing facility involved issuance of a Corps permit for the construction of a 2200-foot, 24" pipeline to
discharge 2 million gallons per day of industrial wastewater into the Bay of St. Louis. The Corps prepared an EA, issued a
Statement of Findings with the conclusion that there would be no adverse effects on air quality and only temporary effects on
water quality, and issued the permit authorizing building the outfall pipeline.¶ Plaintiffs initiated a lawsuit, arguing that the
grant of the pipeline construction permit was a "major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human
environment" and required preparation of an EIS. The District Court, however, concluded that the EA was reasonable and
based on substantial evidence and that the Corps was not required to consider the environmental consequences of the entire
project, but only the effects of the construction and maintenance of the outfall pipe. Thus, the District Court found that the
activity was not a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. Plaintiffs then appealed
the district court decision. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ("Court") held that issuance of the Corps
permit for the outfall pipe was not a sufficient nexus between the Corps and the construction of the plant to make the agency a
partner in such construction and thereby "federalize" its construction, i.e., the grant of the pipeline construction permit was
not a "major federal action" within the meaning of NEPA. The Court found that, in granting the permit, the Corps was limited to
considering the environmental effects of the construction and operation of the pipeline itself. The environmental
consequences of the effluent were a factor to be excluded from the Corps consideration.¶ The Court also noted that the
pipeline was not necessary to operate the plant; another method of discharge, not requiring a Corps permit, was available.
Although disclaiming the adoption of a "but for" text, the Court found that there was insufficient federal involvement to
"federalize" construction of the industrial plant.¶ - In 1984, the Corps proposed an amendment to its NEPA regulations that
would have codified Winnebago and Save the Bay. The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA"),
pursuant to the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7609(a) (1982) must review proposed NEPA compliance regulations. The
Administrator did not approve the Corps' amendment, and, therefore, the proposed regulation was referred to the Council on
Environmental Quality ("CEQ"). 42 U.S.C. § 7609(b) (1982). On June 8, 1987, the CEQ approved the amendment subject to a
few proposed modifications. 52 Fed. Reg. 225120-22 (1987). On February 3, 1988, the Corps revised and published the
amendment; the revision adopted the CEQ's proposals. 53 Fed. Reg. 3120, 3121 (1988). This Corps regulation, set forth in
pertinent part below, represents the most systematic effort to address the "small handle" issue:¶ - Corps Scope of Analysis: (1)
In some situations, a permit applicant may propose to conduct a specific activity requiring a Department of the Army (DA)
permit (e.g., construction of a pier in a navigable water of the United States) which is merely one component of a larger project
(e.g., construction of an oil refinery on an upland area). The district engineer should establish the scope of the NEPA document
(e.g., the EA or EIS) to address the impacts of the specific activity requiring a DA permit and those portions of the entire project
over which the district engineer has sufficient control and responsibility to warrant Federal review.¶ (2) The district engineer
is considered to have control and responsibility for portions of the project beyond the limits of Corps jurisdiction where the
Federal involvement is sufficient to turn an essentially private action into a Federal action. These are cases where the
environmental consequences of the larger project are essentially products of the Corps permit action.¶ Typical factors to be
considered in determining whether sufficient "control and responsibility" exists include:¶ (i) Whether or not the regulated
activity comprises "merely a link" in a corridor type project (e.g., a transportation or utility transmission project).¶ (ii)
Whether there are aspects of the upland facility in the immediate vicinity of the regulated activity which affect the location and
configuration of the regulated activity.¶ (iii)The extent to which the entire project will be within Corps jurisdiction.¶ (iv) The
extent of cumulative Federal control and responsibility.¶ A. Federal control and responsibility will include the portions of the
project beyond the limits of Corps jurisdiction where the cumulative Federal involvement of the Corps and other Federal
agencies is sufficient to grant legal control over such additional portions of the project. These are cases where the
environmental consequences of the additional portions of the projects are essentially products of Federal financing, assistance,
direction, regulation, or approval (not including funding assistance solely in the form of general revenue sharing funds, with
no Federal agency control over the subsequent use of such funds, and not including judicial or administrative civil or criminal
enforcement actions).¶ B . . . .¶ C . . . .¶ (3) . . . . In any case, once the scope of analysis has been defined, the NEPA analysis for
that action should include direct, indirect and cumulative impacts on all Federal interests within the purview of the NEPA
statute. The district engineer should, whenever practicable, incorporate by reference and rely upon the review of other
Federal and State agencies.¶ 33 C.F.R. § 325, App. B, § (7) (b) (1994).¶ The Corps regulations also provide certain examples of
common permitting actions that may implicate the "small handle" issue. In Montrose Parkway Alternatives Coalition v. U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, 405 F.Supp.2d 587 (D. Md. 2005), the plaintiffs challenged the Corps' failure to prepare an EIS for a
locally planned and financed highway project, for which a Corps permit was needed to fill 0.94 acres of federal wetlands. The
Corps limited the scope of its Environmental Assessment to the area of filling and the area of roadway immediately on either
side of it. In doing so the Corps relied on one of the examples in its regulations, which provide:¶ For those regulated activities
that comprise merely a link in a transportation or utility transmission project, the scope of analysis should address the Federal
action, i.e., the specific activity requiring a DA permit and any other portion of the project that is within the control or
responsibility of the Corps of Engineers (or other Federal agencies).¶ For example, a 50-mile electrical transmission cable
crossing a 1 1/4 mile wide river that is a navigable water of the United States requires a DA permit. Neither the origin and
destination of the cable nor its route to and from the navigable water, except as the route applies to the location and
configuration of the crossing, are within the control or responsibility of the Corps of Engineers. Those matters would not be
included in the scope of analysis which, in this case, would address the impacts of the specific cable crossing.¶ 325 C.F.R. § 325,
App. B, § 7(b)(3). The court held that the Corps' regulations were entitled to deference, and found that the case at issue
resembled the example quoted. On the plaintiffs' motion for preliminary injunction, the court held that the Corps' regulations
"expressly contemplate the appropriate scope of the Corps' environmental review for this type of construction and state that
projects such as [this] are not federalized." 405 F.Supp.2d at 599. Thus, it held that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on
the merits of the action and denied the motion.¶ Judicial reliance on the Corps' regulations has also had the contrary result:
nullification of the Corps' determination of the appropriate scope of analysis where it does not comport with the regulations.
Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition v. United States Army Corps of Engineers ("Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition"), 479
F.Supp.2d 607 (S.D. W. Va. 2007), involved a mountaintop removal coal mining operation for which Corps approval was
needed to fill streams in the adjacent valleys with mining overburden. The Corps limited the scope of its NEPA analysis to
effects on the jurisdictional waters. The court held that while the actual mining portion of the project was properly excluded
from the analysis, the Corps improperly failed to examine effects on the wooded valleys that were being filled along with the
streams. The Court based its holding on one of the examples provided in the Corps regulations, which provides: "[i]f an
applicant seeks a DA permit to fill waters or wetlands on which other construction or work is proposed, the control and
responsibility of the Corps, as well as its overall Federal involvement would extend to the portions of the project to be located
on the permitted fill." 33 CFR § 325, App. B § 7(b)(3).¶ Similarly, in Baykeeper v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2006 WL
2711547 (E.D. Cal. Sept. 20, 2006), the court invoked another example from the Corps' regulations in holding that the agency's
NEPA analysis for a dredging project was inappropriately circumscribed. In that case, the Port of Stockton sought a Section 10
permit to dredge the berthing areas for two docks, which the Corps characterized as a "demonstration project" to help gauge
the potential ecological impacts of dredging several other berthing areas, for the ultimate purpose of greatly expanding the
Port's operations. In its NEPA assessment, the Corps only examined the effects of this initial phase of dredging. The court
granted a preliminary injunction enjoining the dredging on the basis that the plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success on
the merits of their claim that the Corps should have assessed the impacts of the entire port expansion project.¶ One critical
basis for the court's decision was another example in the Corps' regulations, providing:¶ [A] shipping terminal normally
requires dredging, wharves, bulkheads, berthing areas and disposal of dredged material in order to function. Permits for such
activities are normally considered sufficient Federal control and responsibility to warrant extending the scope of analysis to
include the upland portions of the facility.¶ 33 C.F.R. § 325, App. B § 7(b)(3). The court additionally noted that EPA and the
National Marine Fisheries Service, in commenting on the application, had requested that the Corps look at the entire project in
one integrated analysis and that the Corps' own statements reflected the fact that the initial round of dredging was for the
purpose of enabling the larger project (thus refuting the Corps' "post-hoc" assertion that the dredging activities had an
independent utility).¶ The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition court distinguished, on the basis of the magnitude of the fill
involved, a case in which the court refused to hold the Corps to the "construction over filled areas" example, Sierra Club v. U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, 450 F.Supp.2d 503 (D.N.J. 2006). That case involved a large commercial development which would
require filling of a total of 7.69 acres of dispersed wetlands (8% of the total project area). The Corps limited its NEPA analysis
to impacts on the wetlands from the filling, and did not analyze the effects of the overall project or even those portions of the
project that would be constructed on filled areas. The court upheld the Corps' FONSI against the plaintiff's argument that the
Corps regulations themselves required such an analysis, holding:¶ Contrary to the Army Corps's interpretation and application
of its own regulations, under Plaintiffs' interpretation a provision that is plainly set forth merely as an "example" would
control the outcome in effectively all cases where a permit applicant proposes to conduct activities requiring a permit as a
component of a larger project. Such an interpretation is contrary to the plain language of the regulations [which] require
"careful analysis of all facts and circumstances surrounding the relationship."¶ Id., 450 F.Supp.2d at 518. While not relying on
it as a factor in its decision, the court did note the fact that the project had already been subject to an extensive state EIS.¶ The CEQ regulations afford only limited guidance for determining the appropriate scope of analysis. They define "major
Federal action" to include:¶ actions with effects that may be major and which are potentially subject to Federal control and
responsibility. Major reinforces but does not have a meaning independent of significantly (§ 1508.27). Actions include the
circumstance where the responsible officials fail to act and that failure to act is reviewable by courts or administrative
tribunals under the Administrative Procedure Act or other applicable law as agency action.¶ (a) Actions include new and
continuing activities, including projects and programs entirely or partly financed, assisted, conducted, regulated, or approved
by federal agencies; new or revised agency rules, regulations, plans, policies, or procedures; and legislative proposals (§§
1506.8, 1508.17). Actions do not include funding assistance solely in the form of general revenue sharing funds, distributed
under the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972, 31 U.S.C. 1221 et seq., with no Federal agency control over the
subsequent use of such funds.¶ 40 C.F.R. § 1508.18 (1994). This definition has been found to be entitled to substantial
deference. Save Barton Creek Ass'n v. Federal Highway Admin., 950 F.2d 1129, 1134 (5th Cir. 1992).¶ IV. Judicial Application
Of Scope of Analysis Factors¶ - "Reasonably close causal relationship"¶ - Only environmental effects that have a "reasonably
close causal relationship", akin to proximate cause in tort law, with the federal agency's determination need be considered in
determining whether an EIS is needed. Those effects which the federal agency has no power to prevent are not "effects" of the
federal action that would enter this analysis. Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen ("Public Citizen"), 541 U.S. 752,
124 S.Ct. 2204 (2004).¶ - "Enablement" or Legal Control v. Veto or Factual Control¶ - Enablement or legal control occurs when
the federal action is a legal precedent to accomplishing the nonfederal project. Landmark West! v. United States Postal Service
("Landmark West!"), 840 F. Supp. 994 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), aff'd, 41 F.3d 1500 (2d Cir. 1994); Goos v. Interstate Commerce
Commission, 911 F.2d 1283, 1294 (8th Cir. 1990); Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc. v. U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, 822 F.2d 104 (D. D.C. 1987). See also Ringsred v. Duluth, 828 F.2d 1305 (8th Cir. 1987) (no federal action was a legal
condition precedent to construction of parking ramp next to Indian bingo facility).¶ - In cases involving issuance of a permit by
the Corps pursuant to Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, 33 U.S.C. § 403, n1 the issuance of the permit cannot be
construed to provide legal control over the entire project. Save Our Wetlands, Inc. v. Sands, 711 F.2d 634, 644 n.9 (5th Cir.
1983).¶ - The same analysis applies to cases involving issuance of a Corps permit pursuant to Section 404 of the Clean Water
Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1344. Macht v. Skinner, 916 F.2d 13 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (where state light rail project required Section 404 permit
to cross wetlands, Corps' ability to prevent the proposed route insufficient to federalize project, even coupled with additional
federal funding for preliminary engineering studies and state EIS's).¶ - To determine whether the federal agency has veto or
factual control over the nonfederal project, the judiciary has identified four somewhat overlapping factors:¶ - the degree of
discretion exercised by the agency over the nonfederal portion of the project, Save Barton Creek Assoc. v. Federal Highway
Admin., 950 F.2d 1129, 1134 (5th Cir. 1992);¶ - whether the federal government has given any direct financial aid to the
nonfederal project, Save Barton Creek Assoc. v. Federal Highway Admin., 950 F.2d 1129, 1135 (5th Cir. 1992);¶ - where
federal funding of a non-federal project is "active," or "programmatic," and provided in furtherance of a funding agency's goals,
it is more likely to be accompanied by indicia of control sufficient to federalize, the project. Landmark West! ("Landmark
West"), 840 F. Supp. 994, 1007 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), aff'd, 41 F.3d 1500 (2d Cir. 1994); San Francisco Tomorrow v. Romney, 472
F.2d 1021, 1022 (9th Cir. 1973) (HUD urban renewal loans and grants); Named Individual Members of San Antonio
Conservation Society v. Texas Highway Dep't, 446 F.2d 1013, 1024-25 (5th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 933 (1972)
possibility of future federal financial
assistance does not enhance a funding agency's degree of control over the
non-federal project for which it is providing funds. Save Barton Creek Ass'n v. Federal Highway
(federal funding of over half the cost of a state highway project).¶ - The mere
Administration, 950 F.2d 1129, 1135 (5th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 505 U.S. 1220 (1992); Chick v. Hills, 528 F.2d 445, 448 (1st
Cir. 1976) (HUD not required to evaluate future phases of project where there was no evidence it would participate further in
the development); Touret v. National Aeronautics and Space Administration ("Touret"), 485 F.Supp.2d 38 (D.R.I. 2007) (even
in combination with federal funding of 11% of the costs of construction of laboratory building, potential to attract federal
research grants
did not federalize the project). This has been held to be the case
even where the project has been designed, under the advice of a federal agency, to
preserve the option of federal funding. Village of Lincolnshire v. Illinois Department of Transportation, 2002 WL 276127 (N.D.
Ill. Feb. 27, 2002). Cf. Maryland Conservation Council, Inc. v. Gilchrist ("Gilchrist"), 808 F.2d 1039 (4th Cir. 1986) (possibility of
federal funding for highway project one element leading court to hold that project was federal action).¶ - An additional indicia
of the extent of federal involvement is the proportion of federal funding to the overall cost of the project. Ka Makani 'Okohala
Ohana Inc. v. Water Supply, 295 F.3d 955, 960 (9th Cir. 2002); see Touret, supra. chua¶ - whether the overall federal
involvement with the project is sufficient to turn an essentially nonfederal action into a federal action. Landmark West!, 840 F.
Supp. 994 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), aff'd, 41 F.3d 1500 (2d Cir. 1994); Goos v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 911 F.2d 1283, 1296
(8th Cir. 1990); Ringsred v. Duluth, 828 F.2d 1305 (8th Cir. 1987); Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska v. Ray, 621 F.2d 269, 272
(8th Cir. 1980); see 40 C.F.R. § 1500.6(c) (CEQ guidance indicates that a nonfederal project does not become a major federal
action merely because there is some incidental federal involvement (52 Fed. Reg. 22517 (June 12, 1987)).¶ - whether the
larger non-federal project will go forward even if the federal action does not occur. Sugarloaf Citizens Ass'n v. FERC, 959 F.2d
508 (4th Cir. 1992) (no federal "control" where the state authority could have "lawfully disregarded" certain FERC criteria and
constructed its facility, albeit without obtaining certain FERC benefits); Sylvester v. United States Army Corps of Engineers,
884 F.2d 394, 400-401 (9th Cir. 1989) (although resort complex could not have been built as planned without federal
wetlands permit for its golf course, because the resort could have gone forward without a golf course, need for the permit
provided insufficient control to federalize the entire complex); Save the Bay, Inc. v. United States Army Corps of Engineers, 610
F.2d 322 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 900, 101 S. Ct. 269 (1980) (where alternative method of effluent discharge available
which did not require Corps permit, the entire plant did not require federal environment review); Proetta v. Dent, 484 F.2d
1146, 1148 (2d Cir. 1973) (project not federalized where alternative non-federal funding available); Touret v. National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, 485 F.Supp.2d 38 (D.R.I. 2007) (new research building
was not a
federal project despite federal funding used for its construction where university had
planned to construct building before applying for federal funds).
Technical consultation and funding doesn't federalize a project
Paget 7 – JD, long and widely recognized as one of this country's leading
practitioners of environmental law and litigation
(David, ALI-ABA COURSE OF STUDY MATERIALS Environmental Impact
Assessment: NEPA and Related Requirements Cosponsored by the Environmental
Law Institute, Lexis)//BB
The power to influence the outcome of a lawsuit by advocacy and negotiation is not synonymous with a federal agency's
authority to exercise control over a nonfederal project that requires federal approval as a legal precondition to
implementation… The rendering of
advice and technical consultation to aid in the defense of the
not federalize
Settlement Agreement in legal proceedings does not significantly affect the environment and does
the State activities. The possibility
that federal funding will be provided in the future is not
sufficient to federalize a
state
project , even when such funding is likely.
A2: W/MT – Decreases federal surveillance data
At best, Fusion centers integrate data – stopping integration doesn’t stop the
surveillance
Masse et al ‘7[Todd, Siobhan O’Neil, John Rollins, Specialist in Domestic Intelligence
and Counterterrorism Domestic Social Policy Division, Analyst in Domestic Security
and Intelligence Domestic Social Policy Division, Specialist in Terrorism and
International Crime, “Fusion Centers: Issues and Options for Congress”, 4/6/2007,
https://epic.org/privacy/fusion/crs_fusionrpt.pdf]//AK
The value proposition for fusion centers is that by integrating various streams of
information and intelligence, including that flowing from the federal government, state,
local, and tribal governments, as well as the private sector, a more accurate picture of risks to
people, economic infrastructure, and communities can be developed and translated into protective action. The ultimate goal of
fusion is to prevent manmade (terrorist) attacks and to respond to natural disasters and manmade threats quickly and
efficiently should they occur. As recipients of federal government-provided national intelligence, another goal of fusion centers
is to model how events inimical to U.S. interests overseas may be manifested in their communities, and align protective
resources accordingly. There are several risks to the fusion center concept—including potential privacy and civil liberties
violations, and the possible inability of fusion centers to demonstrate utility in the absence of future terrorist attacks,
particularly during periods of relative state fiscal austerity.
Counterplans
States CP
1nc
Text: The relevant 50 state governments and territories should [insert plan
text].
Solvency – Fusion Centers
Fusion centers are predominantly funded by the STATE—federal grants not key
to sustaining them.
Rollins and Connors 7 [John Rollins, specialist in terrorism and international crime
for the Congressional Research Service, Timothy Connors, senior manager at the
Law Enforcement and Security Division of CAAS, director of the Center for Policing
Terorrism at the Manhattan Institute, “State Fusion Center Processes and
Procedures”, Manhattan Institute, September 2007, http://www.manhattaninstitute.org/pdf/ptr_02.pdf] MG
Currently, the bulk of funding for fusion centers comes from state and local
government. Since fusion centers are statewide assets and not exclusive to a particular agency, they should be funded
as a separate line item in the state’s budget. According to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service: Annual
budgets for the fusion centers studied for this report appear to range from the tens of
thousands to several million (with one outlier at over $15 million). Similarly, the sources of funding differed
significantly from center to center—as stated, some were entirely dependent on diverting funds from existing state and/or
local funding streams, while others were largely funded by federal grants. Federal funding ranged from 0% to 100% of fusion
center budgets, with the average and
median percentage of federal funding
approximately 31% and 21%, respectively. Thus, it appears that on the whole, fusion
centers are predominantly state and locally funded.15 Wherever the sources of funding are
derived, the authorized budget should align with the mission of the organization and the agreed-upon implementing
strategies. Expectations of the state’s political and public safety leaders and anticipated customer desires must also be
considered in the budget formulation process. Thus, the starting point for forming a budget is establishing or reviewing the
center’s mission, implementing strategies, and determining leader and customer expectations. The objective of this analysis is
to identify and prioritize what needs to be done to accomplish the mission and meet leader and customer expectations. Once
that analysis is completed, sources of funding must be identified. These will include federal government grants, particularly
from DHS and DOJ, contributions from sponsoring agencies,16 nonmonetary contributions from partner agencies (e.g., office
space, computers, office equipment), grants and other contributions from nongovernmental organizations,17 and support
from the business community.
State government is typically responsible for funding
remaining priorities. In light of the state’s sponsorship role, budget proposals should be
presented to the state’s political leaders with funding specifics delineated to show the cause and
effect of the budget being approved at differing levels. It is worth noting that federal government funding is
not absolute and unending, so the budget should not become overly reliant
upon these monies for future requirements. Federal funds are generally provided
for the period requested with no guarantees of future grants. Programs
initiated with federal funds will present sustainability risks if the program
will not conclude in the time frame specified in the grant. It is prudent to
develop alternative funding plans in these cases in advance of a crisis generated by the
cessation of federal funding
A2: States Can’t Close Fusion Centers
Fusion centers are within STATE jurisdiction
DHS 15 [Department of Homeland Security, “Fusion Center Locations and Contact
Information”, 6/29/15, DHS.gov, http://www.dhs.gov/fusion-center-locations-andcontact-information] MG
State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) are owned and operated by state
and local entities, and are designated by the governor of their state. In accordance
with the Federal Resource Allocation Criteria (RAC) policy, which defines objective criteria and a coordinated approach for
prioritizing the allocation of federal resources to fusion centers, the
federal government recognizes
these designations and has a shared responsibility with state and local
governments to support the national network of fusion centers. The following includes
the list of primary and recognized fusion centers (associated contact information). Primary fusion centers
serve as the focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis,
gathering, and sharing of threat-related information and have additional responsibilities related
to the coordination of critical operational capabilities across the statewide
fusion process with other recognized fusion centers. Furthermore, primary centers are the
highest priority for the allocation of available federal resources, including the deployment of personnel and connectivity with
federal data systems.
State Funding T/off NB
1nc
Cutting federal funding forces states to increase funding – trades off with other
state programs – state funding inevitable absent the CP
Monahan and Palmer 9 [Torin Monahan, director of the international surveillance studies network, associate
editor of the Surveillance and Society academic journal, professor of communication studies, Neal A. Palmer, graduate student
in community research, “The emerging politics of DHS fusion centers”, Security Dialogue, December 2009,
http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/FC-SD.pdf] MG
Unfunded mandates represent an additional criticism by state and local governments of
fusion centers. Though federal funds have become increasingly available to establish and
improve fusion centers, much of the onus of funding salaries for public- and
private-sector analysts and other fusion center personnel rests with state and
local authorities (Ebbert, 2005; Sheridan & Hsu, 2006). States and localities feel the need to
cut budgets in other departments in order to fund fusion centers, even if
threats of terrorism appear minimal, and this may weaken their ability to
respond adequately to other crimes or maintain other socially necessary
programs (Schmitt & Johnston, 2008; Belluck, 2004). If local and state agencies choose not to
direct as much money to fusion centers, the fusion center may not operate at
full strength (Hall, 2007). Ironically, then, inadequate funding at the federal level
may mean that fusion centers cannot establish coordinated counter-terrorism
activities throughout the country.
[INSERT STATE IMPACT MODULE]
FYI - List of State Fusion Centers
*Use this evidence as factual proof that when federal government defunds Fusion
Centers that these states will have to increase their contributions to keep centers
open.
List of fusion centers operating today
DHS 15 – (Department of Homeland Security, “Fusion Center Locations and Contact
Information,” July 23, 2015, http://www.dhs.gov/fusion-center-locations-andcontact-information)//RP
Primary Fusion Centers
• Alabama Fusion Center
•
Alaska Information and Analysis Center
•
Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center
•
Arkansas State Fusion Center
•
California State Threat Assessment Center
•
Colorado Information Analysis Center
•
Connecticut Intelligence Center
•
Delaware Information and Analysis Center
•
Florida Fusion Center
•
Georgia Information Sharing and Analysis Center
•
Hawaii Fusion Center
•
Idaho Criminal Intelligence Center
•
Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center
•
Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center
•
Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center
•
Kansas Intelligence Fusion Center
•
Kentucky Intelligence Fusion Center
•
Louisiana State Analytical & Fusion Exchange
•
Maine Information and Analysis Center
•
Mariana Regional Fusion Center (Guam)
•
Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center
•
Massachusetts Commonwealth Fusion Center
•
Michigan Intelligence Operations Center
•
Minnesota Fusion Center
•
Mississippi Analysis and Information Center
•
Missouri Information Analysis Center
•
Montana Analysis & Technical Information Center
•
Nebraska Information Analysis Center
•
New Hampshire Information and Analysis Center
•
New Jersey Regional Operations Intelligence Center
•
New Mexico All Source Intelligence Center
•
New York State Intelligence Center
•
North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center
•
North Dakota State and Local Information Center
•
Ohio Strategic Analysis and Information Center
•
Oklahoma Information Fusion Center
•
Oregon Terrorism Information Threat Assessment Network
•
Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center
•
Puerto Rico National Security State Information Center
•
Rhode Island State Fusion Center
•
South Carolina Information and Intelligence Center
•
South Dakota Fusion Center
•
Southern Nevada Counter-Terrorism Center (Las Vegas, Nevada)
•
Tennessee Fusion Center
•
Texas Joint Crime Information Center
•
U.S. Virgin Islands Fusion Center
•
Utah Statewide Information and Analysis Center
•
Vermont Intelligence Center
•
Virginia Fusion Center
•
Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center (Washington, D.C.)
•
Washington State Fusion Center
•
West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center
•
Wisconsin Statewide Information Center
Recognized Fusion Centers
As the Federal Government respects the authority of state governments to designate
fusion centers, any designated fusion center, including major urban area fusion
centers, not designated as a primary fusion center is referred to as a recognized
fusion center.
• Austin Regional Intelligence Center; Austin, TX
•
Boston Regional Intelligence Center; Boston, MA
•
Central California Intelligence Center; Sacramento, CA
•
Central Florida Intelligence Exchange; Orlando, FL
•
Chicago Crime Prevention and Information Center; Chicago, IL
•
Cincinnati/Hamilton County Regional Terrorism Early Warning Group;
Cincinnati, OH
•
Dallas Fusion Center; Dallas, TX
•
Delaware Valley Intelligence Center; Philadelphia, PA
•
Detroit and Southeast Michigan Information and Intelligence Center; Detroit,
MI
•
El Paso Multi-Agency Tactical Response Information eXchange (MATRIX); El
Paso, TX
•
Houston Regional Intelligence Service Center; Houston, TX
•
Kansas City Terrorism Early Warning Fusion Center; Kansas City, MO
•
Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center; Los Angeles, CA
•
Nevada Threat Analysis Center; Carson City, NV
•
North Central Texas Fusion Center; McKinney, TX
•
Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center; Cleveland, OH
•
Northern California Regional Intelligence Center; San Francisco, CA
•
Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center; Fairfax, VA
•
Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center; Orange County, CA
•
San Diego Law Enforcement Coordination Center; San Diego, CA
•
Southeast Florida Fusion Center; Miami, FL
•
Southeastern Wisconsin Threat Analysis Center; Milwaukee, WI
•
Southwest Texas Fusion Center; San Antonio, TX
•
Southwestern PA Region 13 Fusion Center; Pittsburgh, PA
•
St. Louis Fusion Center; St. Louis, MO
CA Module
SSI/SSP on chopping block -- its key to support millions of seniors and people
with disabilities
California Budget & Policy Center 15 – Organization dedicated to CA budget
analysis (California Budget & Policy Center, “SSI/SSP and the Governor’s Proposed
2015-16 Budget: Recession-Era Cuts Remain in Place,” January 29, 2015,
http://calbudgetcenter.org/blog/ssissp-and-the-governors-proposed-2015-16budget-recession-era-cuts-remain-in-place/)//RP
During the dark days of California’s recent budget crisis, state policymakers had to make
very tough choices about which critical public services to cut, and by how much. At the
time, there was a general expectation around the state Capitol — and throughout California — that as the economy improved
and revenues came back, policymakers would undo some or all of the reductions that they imposed during and following the
Great Recession. While lawmakers and the Governor have begun to reinvest in important services and systems over the past
couple of years, some
key programs remain on the chopping block despite a growing
state economy and higher revenues. This list includes one of California’s most
important public supports for seniors and people with disabilities: SSI/SSP
(the Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment program).
SSI/SSP uses both federal (SSI) and state (SSP) dollars to provide modest monthly grants that are intended to
help 1.3 million low-income Californians keep a roof over their heads and
purchase food and other basic necessities. We described the state’s recession-era cuts to SSI/SSP
cash assistance in a previous blog post. The bottom line is that state policymakers cut California’s portion
of the grant from $568 to $396 for couples and from $233 to $156 for individuals. As a result, the maximum grant for
individuals — currently $889 per month, including the federal SSI grant — amounts to just 90 percent of the federal poverty
line. (In 2015, the poverty line for an individual is $11,770, or roughly $980 per month.) These state cuts undoubtedly
increased hardship for vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities. Yet, they remain in place today, and the
Governor proposes to maintain the state’s SSP grants at their current levels in 2015-16, the fiscal year that begins this coming
July 1.
Cutting the SSI/SSP would eliminate support to the elderly/disabled, putting
them in further risk of homelessness or malnutrition.
AHF 15 – Community organization dedicated to providing support to the most
vulnerable (Alliance Healthcare Foundation, “The Great Struggle of Seniors Living
on SSI and SSP in California,” June 2015,
http://alliancehealthcarefoundation.org/the-great-struggle-of-seniors-living-on-ssiand-ssp-in-california/)//RP
Right now, seniors relying on SSI and state supplementary payment (SSP) in California
have incomes that are, on average, below $877 per month. As a frame of reference, the federal
poverty level for a single person sits at $981 per month, and the state benefits come up over $100 short of that mark.
There are approximately 1.3 million low-income seniors and people with
disabilities living in California today, making this a serious problem statewide.
These affected individuals need to pay for food, rent, transportation, utilities on this
meager assistance program, but the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka Food
Stamps) is not available to them. This puts them in a serious bind! They need food, but their funds are already depleted due to
the cost of living (in San Diego, fair market rent for a studio apartment is $964/month–more than the maximum benefits
allowed!). The
state cannot dole out any more assistance to help them make up the
difference. This reality puts them at a serious risk of homelessness,
malnutrition, and hunger.
IL Module
Regional Safe Schools program is on the chopping block
SJR – State Newspaper (State Journal Register, “Regional Safe Schools program also
on chopping block,” March 23, 2015, http://www.sjr.com/article/20150323/NEWS/150329795)//RP
Regional Safe Schools is one of many popular state programs in jeopardy
under Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July
1, which aims to close a $6.2 billion gap between anticipated revenue and what's
being spent this year. Rauner has called for a $300 million increase in overall K-12 funding, but to pay
for it has also proposed no funding for a number of statewide education programs, including slashing the $6.3
million for the Regional Safe Schools initiative. The program serves more than
3,700 Illinois students from grades 6 through 12 who have been expelled or
suspended from regular public schools. Created by legislation in 1997, the
program offers a non-traditional setting for students and helps keep them on
track to graduate, education officials say. A Rauner spokeswoman said in a statement that the
governor discontinued the state grant to provide “more local control” to school districts, rather than appropriating the money
directly to Regional Safe Schools. Districts can choose to use general state aid funds to place students in a Regional Safe School,
the spokeswoman said. However, education officials say general state aid that schools could shift to the program isn’t enough
to keep the doors open. In Sangamon County, Regional Superintendent Jeff Vose said his office receives a $90,000 state grant
to supplement its program at the Capital Area Career Center, which serves 20 to 25 students per year from area schools other
than in the Springfield School District, which has its own alternative program. Vose said his office also charges a $400 fee up
front to participating schools and already receives the general state aid the home school would normally get for the student
during the time he or she enrolls in the program. The
state grant, which already had been cut by
about 60 percent over the last decade, is needed to help pay a small staff and fund
other expenses associated with running the program, he said.
Regional Safe Schools program’s key to prevent higher school dropout rates
Dal Santo 15 – Regional Superintendent of Schools, Illinois (Patricia Dal Santo,
“Regional Schools Chief Warns of Danger if Illinois Regional Safe Schools Program
Cut,” March 3, 2015, http://www.rebootillinois.com/2015/03/03/editorspicks/pat-dal-santo/regional-schools-chief-warns-of-danger-if-illinois-regionalsafe-school-program-cut/34033/)//RP
The Regional Safe School Program was created nearly 20 years ago to provide
a safety net of alternative education for students removed from classes for
disruptions. More than 4,000 students around the state in approximately 80
RSSP program sites get another chance to earn an education in a supportive,
individualized learning environment. So many students use their new
opportunity to improve behavior, attend class more regularly, complete their
coursework and either return to their home school to graduate or receive
their GED here. The counseling and life-skills training they receive in the safe
schools turns around their lives for the better. Where will these students go
without a safe school alternative? What will administrators and teachers do when
behavior problems disrupt classes and create dangerous situations? We need to work with
the governor and legislators this spring to keep safe schools in place for all students to succeed. As we join with other school
administration organizations to support the Vision 20/20 push for a brighter future for Illinois schools from the inside,
regional superintendents of schools are an important part of the solution for the problems that must be addressed now. At
150, we are energized and prepared for the work ahead.
AK Module
Alaska’s crop program is on chopping block.
DeMarban 15 – Writer for Alaska Dispatch News (Alex Demarban, “Farm to School
program falls onto Alaska budget chopping block,” April 1, 2015,
http://www.adn.com/article/20150401/farm-school-program-falls-alaska-budgetchopping-block)//RP
A small state program that supporters call "wildly successful" and has helped
Alaska schools win grants to grow their own crops and purchase food from
local farmers probably won’t survive the Legislature’s budget ax.
But Alaska Farm to School -- on track to lose all its state funding as lawmakers are
making cuts to reduce a $3.5-billion budget hole -- just might live on in diminished
form. State managers say they’ll try to win federal funds to pay for the program’s two positions, temporarily keeping it
alive for perhaps another year or longer. Supporters are hopeful. With an annual budget of $180,000, the effort has
sparked something of a surge in educational agriculture in Alaska, with school
greenhouses and gardens growing from 103 to 146 the last two years, according to
the program’s census. By offering small grants as seed money and expertise to attract larger grants from other
agencies, Alaska Farm to Schools, launched in 2010, has helped bring about unique efforts in Alaska communities, according to
supporters. Those include a commercial-sized greenhouse at a school in Tok, a hydroponic farm in a refrigerator van that can
be shipped to rural communities, and a Thorne Bay school greenhouse that produces veggies sold at local businesses,
supporters say. Advocates -- and there are many -- say the
program has led to new teaching
opportunities, put fresh veggies in remote school cafeterias, and provided an
economic boost for student groups and farmers. With Alaska importing most of its food from the
Lower 48, they say, it has also helped the state take steps to become more “food secure” by
teaching students about local alternatives. “They have done fabulous work,” said Anupama Joshi, head of
the National Farm to School Network that’s trying to expand the nation’s growing farm-to-school movement. Joshi said the
Alaska program set an example for other states by pioneering the use of mini-grants -- $3,000 or less -- to generate other
funds. Despite the widespread support, it's uncertain whether Alaska Farm to School will survive.
Alaska Department of Natural Resource officials say they’re pretty certain they can get federal funding for at least one position.
But they caution there’s
no guarantee. Letting the program disappear would be a big
mistake, said Jason Hoke, executive director of the Copper Valley Development Association.
Farm to School program key to sustainable food system in Alaska.
Synder et al 15 – Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Co-Chair of the
Alaska Food Policy Council, and former Co-Chairs. (Liz Snyder, Victoria Briggs, and
Lisa Sadlier-Hart, “Farm-to-School program is a wise investment; keep it off
chopping block,” March 11, 2015, http://www.adn.com/article/20150311/farmschool-program-wise-investment-keep-it-chopping-block)//RP
1. Alaskans spend $1.5 BILLION dollars on imported food each year.
2. Only 5-10 percent of food consumed is produced or harvested in state, but great swaths of arable land remain uncultivated.
3. About 15 percent of Alaska households are food insecure.
4. Alaskans spend about $450 million dollars on treating diet-related medical conditions.
5. We have a population that is largely disconnected from the food system -- most kids can’t tell you what lies beneath the frilly
green of a carrot top coming out of the soil.
These figures might sound gloomy, but they highlight the immense opportunity that we have to become healthier,
wealthier and more food secure. What
if we spent that $1.5 billion on Alaska-grown products
and kept that money in local economies? What if we produced more healthy foods in
quantities that could meet the demands of our school cafeterias? What if we
provided our children with the tools and knowledge necessary to make healthy food
choices and maintain a healthy weight? We already have a key mechanism to
achieving these goals -- it’s the Farm to School Program. The Farm to School
Program helps to prioritize getting locally produced, healthy goods into
cafeterias; raise a generation of food leaders and smart consumers; and create
a large, reliable market for increased in-state food production. In three short years,
the number of Alaska school districts involved in Farm to School has grown from
zero to 68 percent. There’s been an 11 percent increase in school gardens
statewide. All of Alaska's school districts are now serving at least one local
food item in their meal programs and there’s still tremendous room for
growth. In five years, the program has leveraged over $1 million from partner
agencies. This is just the short list of accomplishments. All of this and more has been achieved with
an annual budget of about $190,000. Talk about bang for your buck! If the
Legislature eliminates or cuts funding to the Farm to School Program, they
aren’t cutting the fat out of the budget. They are cutting the carrots, the
potatoes, the greens and even the local fish out of your children’s lunches, and
they’re cutting supports necessary to expand in-state production. We implore the Legislature not to
eliminate or reduce the funding for our Farm to School Program. It is an
incredibly efficient use of a small amount of funds that has proven itself over
the past five years and is one of the shining pillars of a state food system that
is becoming stronger, more sustainable and more resilient. Don’t let the Legislature undo
our current progress, and don’t let it stand in the way of what more can be done.
Oversight CP
1nc
Text: The United States federal government shall oversee surveillance tactics
initiated through FUSION CENTERS per the Citron and Pasquale evidence
recommendations.
CP is mutually exclusive -- it picks out of “any and all” language of plan text
CP can solve for fusion center overreach that the plan claims to solves – their
solvency authors prove
Citron and Pasquale, ‘11 [Danielle Keats, professor at University of Maryland school of Law, Frank Pasquale,
professor at Seton Hall University School of Law, “Network Accountability for the Domestic Intelligence Apparatus”,
http://goo.gl/Edpe8k, Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 62, 1442, 2011] //JM
A new domestic intelligence network has made vast amounts of data available to federal and state agencies and law
enforcement officials. The network is anchored by "fusion centers," novel sites of intergovernmental collaboration that
generate and share intelligence and information. Several fusion centers have generated controversy for engaging in
extraordinary measures that place citizens on watch lists, invade citizens' privacy, and chill free expression. In addition to
eroding civil liberties, fusion center overreach has resulted in wasted resources without concomitant gains in security.
While many scholars have assumed that this network represents a trade-off
between security and civil liberties, our study of fusion centers suggests these
goals are, in fact, mutually reinforcing. Too often, fusion centers' structure has been based on clever
legal strategies for avoiding extant strictures on information sharing, rather than on objective analysis of terror threats. The
"information sharing environment" created by fusion centers has shortcircuited traditional modes of agency accountability. Our twentieth-century model of agency
accountability cannot meaningfully address twenty-first-century agency coordination. A new concept of
accountability - "network accountability" - is needed to address the
shortcomings of fusion centers. Network accountability has technical, legal, and
institutional dimensions. Technical standards can render data exchange between agencies in the network
better subject to review. Legal redress mechanisms can speed the correction of inaccurate or inappropriate information. A
robust strategy is necessary to institutionalize these aspects of network
accountability. Nevertheless, domestic intelligence is daily generated and shared. n5 Federal agencies, including the
DHS, gather information in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials in what Congress has deemed the
"information sharing environment" ("ISE"). n6 The ISE is essentially a network, with hubs known as "fusion centers" whose
federal and state analysts gather and share data and intelligence on a wide range of threats. The network's architects have
assured congressional panels, journalists, and concerned citizens that interagency communications accord with relevant laws
and that information gathering is targeted and focused. n7 They claim that fusion centers raise few new privacy concerns, n8
and that any privacy problems are well in hand. n9 They reason that any [*1444] given fusion center employee must simply
follow the privacy and civil liberties policy of his or her employer - be it a local, state, or national agency.n10 DHS and local
fusion center leaders claim their network only menaces criminals and terrorists, not ordinary citizens. n11 Unfortunately, a
critical mass of abuses and failures at fusion centers over the past few years makes it impossible to accept these assurances at
face value. Fusion centers facilitate a domestic intelligence network that collapses traditional distinctions between law
enforcement and foreign wars, between federal and state authorities, and between government surveillance and corporate
data practices. By operating at the seams of state and federal laws, they circumvent traditional accountability measures.
Inadequate oversight of fusion centers has led to significant infringements on
civil liberties. Years after they were initiated, advocates of fusion centers have failed to give more than a cursory
account of the benefits they provide. Were fusion center abuses consistently associated with anti-terror accomplishments, the
new ISE might pose a tragic, yet necessary, choice between security and liberty. However, a critical mass of cases, explored in
detail in Part I, suggests that the lack
of oversight of fusion centers is both eroding civil
liberties and wasting resources. Consider two recent cases. In 2008, Minnesota law enforcement, working
with the state's fusion center, engaged in intelligence-led policing to identify potential threats to the upcoming Republican
National Convention ("RNC"). n12 Police deployed infiltrators to report on political groups and tapped into various groups'
information exchanges. n13 The fusion center spent more than 1000 hours analyzing potential threats to the RNC. n14 A
fusion center report, distributed to more than 1300 law enforcement officers, identified bottled water, first-aid supplies,
computers, and pamphlets as potential evidence of threats. n15 Another report warned law enforcement that demonstrators
would "collect and stockpile items at various locations ... . Anything that seems out of place [*1445] for its location could
indicate the stockpiling of supplies to be used against first responders." n16 Because the fusion center had advised police to be
on the lookout for feces and urine that protestors might attempt to throw during clashes on the street, police pulled over a bus
after noticing that it contained two five-gallon buckets in the rear. n17 What they found was chicken feed, not feces. n18 Days
later, at the convention, police arrested 800 people: Most of the charges were dropped or downgraded once prosecutors
reviewed the police allegations and activity. n19 Ginned up to confront a phantom terror threat, the fusion center-led
operations did little more than disrupt a peaceful political protest. Fusion center overreach is not limited to Minnesota or
notable events like those involving RNC. Over a nineteen-month period in 2004 and 2005, Maryland state police conducted
surveillance of human rights groups, peace activists, and death penalty opponents. n20 As a result, fifty-three nonviolent
political activists were classified as "terrorists," including two Catholic nuns and a Democratic candidate for local office. n21 A
Maryland fusion center shared the erroneous terrorist classifications with federal drug enforcement and terrorist databases,
as well as with the National Security Administration (NSA). n22 The ISE has yet to provide a systematic redress mechanism to
remove misinformation from databases spread throughout the networked environment or to address the stigma that can
result from misclassifications. Had the ACLU of Maryland not fortuitously discovered the fusion center's activities in
connection with an open records request, the political activists might have remained on these watch lists. In response to these
and other similar incidents, Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, argued that fusion centers
conceive the business of gathering and sharing intelligence as "synonymous with monitoring and disparaging political dissent
and association protected by the First Amendment." n23 A fusion center official confirmed Fein's concern by noting: [*1446]
You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought
against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against [the
war] is a terrorist act. n24 If
a domestic intelligence agency conducted such outrageous
surveillance of innocent political activists, ordinary institutions of oversight
familiar from administrative law - such as judicial review and cost-benefit
analysis - could directly address the problem. n25 Yet misdirected surveillance remains a concern,
because it is unclear who exactly is responsible for these abuses - state and local police or federal funders of fusion centers?
The structure of the ISE poses important new challenges to administrative law, a body of law built to address actions of
individual agencies rather than the interactions of a network of agencies. Since it focuses on individual agencies, traditional
administrative law is ill-equipped to assure a network's accountability. Participants in fusion centers have often attempted to
shift blame for their shortcomings. DHS
officials insist that state and local authorities are
ultimately responsible for fusion center activities, even as they distribute grants and guidelines
that shape fusion center activity. n26 As state and municipal budgets contract due to
declining tax revenues and fiscal retrenchment, local officials may feel
pressed to feed information and find threats in order to maintain the flow of
federal funding. There are many reasons to worry about the types of influence and information exchange this
relationship betokens. Unlike centralized programs to which the privacy and civil liberties community could rapidly respond,
fusion centers are diffuse and difficult to monitor. More a network than an institution ,
fusion centers have so
far evaded oversight from watchdogs focused on traditional law enforcement institutions. n27 This Article
examines the new ISE, in which privacy invasions, chilled speech, and costly distractions from core intelligence missions
increasingly emanate from dysfunctional transactions within networks of agencies rather than from any particular entity
acting unilaterally. We argue that basic
administrative law principles of due process should
apply just as forcefully to agency interactions as they do to agency actions.
Certain exchanges of information between agencies should be monitored,
even in a general environment of openness and collaboration. [*1447] The argument
proceeds as follows: Part I offers a comprehensive description of fusion centers, based on a wide range of primary and
secondary sources and litigation materials. Part II critiques the current operations of fusion centers, concluding that the
centers have eroded privacy and civil liberties without concomitant gains in security. Fortunately, officials
at the
DHS (the main agency funding fusion centers) have begun to realize the scope of these problems, as we describe in Part
III.A. They are even beginning to recognize one of the central arguments of this piece: that liberty
and security are mutually reinforcing, because nearly all the problematic
abuses at fusion centers are distractions from their central anti-crime and
anti-terror missions. However, there are still critical shortcomings in DHS
oversight of fusion centers, as we demonstrate in III.B: The agency is trying to apply a twentieth-century model of agency
accountability to twenty-first-century interagency coordination. The solution, we argue in Part IV, is network
accountability: technical and legal standards that render interactions between
the parts of the ISE subject to review and correction. n28 We advance protocols
for auditing fusion center activities, including "write-once, read-many"
technology and data integrity standards. Legal redress mechanisms for
inaccurate or inappropriate targeting can be built on this foundation of data. Finally, in Part V, we
promote standards of interagency governance designed to hold the ISE
accountable. Without objective performance standards, fusion centers may
consume an ever larger share of our security and law enforcement budget
without demonstrating their worth. Advances in interagency governance in other fields suggest new
paths for network accountability in the context of fusion centers. As they are presently run, fusion centers all but guarantee
further inclusion of innocents on watch lists and wasteful investigation of activists with no connections to crime or terrorism.
n29 Fusion centers' actions inconvenience both civilians and law enforcers, unfairly tarnish reputations, and deter legitimate
dissent. In this Article, we propose a framework for identifying and preventing future abuses .
Principles of open
government inform our analysis throughout. A policy of de facto total
information awareness by the government should be complemented [*1448] by
increasing accountability - specifically, the network accountability we define and defend in this Article.
Solvency – Civil Liberties
Oversight of Fusion Centers is key to protect civil liberties and uphold the first
amendment.
Levin and Coburn, ‘5 – Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
(Carl Levin and Tom Coburn M.D., United States Senate, “FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR
AND INVOLVEMENT IN STATE AND LOCAL FUSION CENTERS,” PERMANENT
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS)//JM
Congress should clarify the purpose of providing federal monetary and other
support for DHS’s fusion center efforts. The Subcommittee’s investigation could not verify that the
statutory basis for DHS’s involvement in fusion centers – to strengthen federal counterterrorism efforts – was reflected in the
department’s efforts. Congress should require DHS to conform its efforts to match its counterterrorism statutory purpose, or
redefine DHS’s fusion center mission. DHS should reform its intelligence reporting efforts at state and local fusion centers to
eliminate duplication. DHS reporting from fusion centers duplicates – often poorly – better intelligence-sharing processes
undertaken by other agencies. The Joint Terrorism Task Forces receive threat-related information; the National SAR Initiative
shares suspicious activity reports from state and locals; and the Terrorist Screening Center gathers information on state and
local officials’ interactions with individuals in the National Counter Terrorism Center’s TIDE database. DHS should improve its
training of intelligence reporters. DHS must ensure that any DHS personnel engaged in reporting intelligence information from
within the United States be adequately trained and certified to prevent violations of U.S. law or DHS guidelines, policy or
regulations. DHS should strictly align fusion center grant funding to meet federal needs. When FEMA gives states and cities
grant funds for a fusion center, it should not allow those dollars to be spent on items that do not directly contribute to
improving the fusion center’s abilities to contribute to its federal mission of counterterrorism. DHS should track how much
money it gives to each fusion center. FEMA should identify how much money it grants to states and urban areas for direct or
indirect support of each individual fusion center, and report those amounts annually to Congress. PM-ISE should evaluate
fusion center capabilities and performance. At the request of DHS, the Program Manager for the Information Sharing
Environment (PM-ISE) in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence conducted a national assessment of fusion center
capabilities that produced useful findings, and PM-ISE should use that model to conduct future evaluations. In addition, it
should begin to evaluate fusion centers’ performance as participants in federal counterterrorism information-sharing efforts.
DHS should link funding of each fusion center to its value and performance. Granting funds for state and local fusion center
efforts year after year, without expecting or even examining the results received from previous grants, provides no mechanism
to ensure federal taxpayers receive a return on their investments. DHS should timely disclose to Congress significant problems
within its operations. Serious issues plagued DHS fusion center efforts for years, yet officials were reluctant to share them with
Congress. Even when asked about these problems, DHS avoided 107 acknowledging the problems, initially withheld
documents, and repeatedly resisted Subcommittee requests, which unnecessarily prolonged the Subcommittee investigation.
DHS should align its practices and guidelines to protect civil liberties, so they
adhere to the Constitution, federal law, and its statutory mission. DHS should
strengthen its protections to prevent DHS personnel from improperly
collecting and retaining intelligence on Constitutionally protected activity. It
should not retain inappropriate and illegal reporting. It should strictly enforce
policies, and hold all of its employees to the highest standards, including by
promptly barring poorly performing personnel from issuing domestic
intelligence reports involving Americans.
Oversight CP: ER NB
1nc
Fusion centers key to emergency response – networking necessary for
prevention and response
Masse and Rollins 7 [Todd Masse, Specialist in domestic intelligence and
counterterrorism domestic social policy, John Rollins, Specialist in Terrorism and
International Crime Defense, “A Summary of Fusion Centers: Core Issues and
Options for Congress”, Congressional Research Service, 9/19/07,
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34177.pdf] MG
Many of the “first-wave” centers, those created soon after 9/11, were initially solely focused on
counterterrorism. Today, less than 15% of the fusion centers interviewed for this report18 described their mission
as solely counterterrorism. Since their inception, many counterterrorism-focused fusion centers have
expanded their mission to include all-crimes and/or all-hazards. Sometimes this shift is official, for others
it is de facto and reflected in the day-to-day operations of the center, but not in official documentation. This shift toward an allcrimes and/or all-hazards focus can be explained by several factors, to include desire to conform to what they see as a national
trend, the need for local and non-law enforcement buy-in, and the need for sustainable resources. Approximately 40% of
fusion centers interviewed for this report describe their center’s mission as “all-crimes.” However, some fusion centers are
concerned with any crime, large or small, petty or violent, while others are focused on large-scale, organized, and destabilizing
crimes, to include the illicit drug trade, gangs, terrorism, and organized crime, which one center deemed a “homeland security
focus.” A little more than 40% of fusion centers interviewed for this report describe their center as “all-hazards”as well as allcrimes. It appears as if “all-hazards” means different things to different people — for some, all-hazards suggests the
fusion center is receiving and reviewing streams of incoming
information/intelligence from agencies dealing with all-hazards, to include
law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency management. To others, all
hazards means that representatives from the aforementioned array of public sectors are represented in the center and/or
considered partners to its mission. all-hazards At some centers, denotes the entity’s mission and scope — meaning the
fusion center is responsible for preventing and helping to mitigate both manmade events and natural disasters. For others, “all-hazards” indicates both a preevent prevention role as well as a post-event response, and possibly recovery,
role.
Coordinated response systems key to solve disease threats
Merianos 7 [Angela Merianos, alert and response operations consultant in the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic
Alert and Response of the World Health Organization, “Surveillance and Response to Disease Emergence,” Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg, international science and medical publisher, 2007,
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/910/chp%253A10.1007%252F978-3-540-709626_19.pdf?originUrl=http%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fchapter%2F10.1007%2F978-3-540-709626_19&token2=exp=1438011674~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F910%2Fchp%25253A10.1007%25252F978-3-540-709626_19.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Fchapter%252F10.1007%252F978-3-54070962-6_19*~hmac=19cdf23bf2d37ce8fc173b06c01bf1c04a4aa8f54c431a04531362522654b0fc] MG
Preparedness planning for disease emergence usually involves some form of
risk assessment to assess the likelihood of infection and disease, and the impact on susceptible
populations. In the context of emerging zoonoses, comprehensive risk assessments
are needed to identify the animal–human and animal–animal interfaces where transmission of
infectious agents occurs and risk reduction interventions are feasible (see the chapter by
Cleaveland et al., this volume). Surveillance and Response to Disease Emergence 489 As wildlife is important in the epidemiology of many, if not most, zoonoses,
wildlife should be taken into account in the risk analysis framework (Kruse et al. 2004).
Health risk assessments for emerging zoonotic diseases should be undertaken whenever possible in the context of developmental projects that have ecological impacts
and are likely to bring people into greater contact with wildlife (see the chapter by Daszak et al., this volume).
Assessing the risk of
spillover events (Daszak et al. 2000) among species requires an understanding of the behaviour and
ecology of emerging pathogens and the complex interactions between the agent, its natural reservoir(s), the behaviour of humans or animals susceptible to infection,
and the ecosystems in which they interact. It is becoming increasingly apparent that bats are the reservoirs for a number of pathogenic viruses (Calisher et al. 2006;
Field et al. 2004; see the chapter by Field et al., this volume), including rabies (Warrell and Warrell 2004; see the chapter by Nel and Rupprecht, this volume), the
Australian bat lyssavirus (Fraser et al. 1996; Field et al. 1999, 2004; Gould et al. 2002; Warrell and Warrell 2004), henipaviruses (Eaton et al. 2006), SARS-like
coronaviruses (Li et al. 2005), and Ebola virus (Leroy et al. 2005; see the chapter by Gonzalez et al., this volume), and are considered candidate reservoirs for Marburg
virus (Leroy et al. 2005; see the chapter by Gonzalez et al., this volume). Other taxa may also prove to have co-evolved with a variety of viruses pathogenic for humans
limited knowledge of these relationships,
especially for wildlife diseases, makes the risk assessment of spillover
particularly difficult (Polley 2005), thereby also limiting our ability to design
interventions that will reduce opportunities for interspecies transmission.
Data to inform risk assessments, especially in less developed countries, are often lacking or
unreliable, and some risk models have therefore extrapolated the results obtained from data collected in developed countries (FAO 2004). Accordingly,
and animals (Peterson et al. 2004). For some emerging zoonoses,
differences between countries and regions in the risk parameters used to develop the model need to be considered in designing and implementing surveillance and
diagnostic systems for emerging diseases and risk reduction strategies. Some of these data are routinely collected or arise from research conducted in the human health,
agriculture and wildlife sectors. In some countries, national livestock databases designed to increase the safety and traceability of livestock products are potentially
valuable sources of data and are being used to strengthen veterinary epidemiology and economic analysis (James 2005). Livestock data which can be used for
epidemiological purposes include movement records, animal health program data, quality assurance schemes, production records and breeding records. Insufficient
work has gone into collating and triangulating data from these various sources to build an integrated and dynamic picture of the evolution of emerging zoonoses. The
potential applications of integrated human, livestock 490 A. Merianos and wildlife data include developing a better understanding of the descriptive epidemiology of
emerging zoonoses, improved risk and decision analysis, and mathematical models to inform policy development and disease control management in all sectors. Using
cartographic and geostatistical methods during epidemiological investigations can provide real-time quantitative data for identifying and tracking the geospatial spread
of infectious diseases (Lai et al. 2004). 3 Mechanisms for Surveillance and Response to Emerging Zoonoses Factors that drive disease emergence in human, livestock and
wildlife populations are increasingly the result of human activity, and include changes to global ecology and climate, land use, animal husbandry and food production
The impact of emerging diseases
can be minimised through a well-prepared and strong public health system and similar systems
developed by the livestock, wildlife and food safety sectors. To respond to emerging zoonoses effectively,
practices, air travel and the globalisation of trade (see the chapter by Childs et al., this volume).
preparedness plans, early warning systems and response capacity must be
strengthened and implemented in a coordinated way across all sectors . To meet the
global challenge that emerging disease outbreaks present, the International Health Regulations (IHR) (WHO 2005a; Merianos and Peiris 2005) provide a legal
framework for the international public health response to control cross-boundary infectious diseases. The purpose and scope of the revised IHR “are to prevent, protect
against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease in ways that are commensurate with, and restricted to, public health risks
and which avoid unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade.” The IHR (2005) explicitly recognise the need for intersectoral and multidisciplinary
cooperation in managing risks of potential international public health importance. The IHR include a decision algorithm to assist countries in determining whether an
outbreak or other unusual disease event may constitute a threat to international public health. National health authorities are required to report to the World Health
Organization in the event of the following: smallpox, wild type poliovirus, human influenza (new subtype) and SARS; any event of potential international public health
concern; and known epidemic-prone diseases that have the potential to spread internationally or threaten trade (e.g. cholera, plague, viral haemorrhagic fevers and
West Nile fever). Surveillance and Response to Disease Emergence 491 In 2000, the WHO Department of Communicable Diseases Surveillance and Response in Geneva,
Switzerland, initiated the formation of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) (WHO 2000), which provides the operational and technical response
arm for the control of global outbreaks. Since April 2000, GOARN has played a key role in providing support to outbreak investigations in countries seeking assistance.
Technical cooperation includes the provision of multidisciplinary field teams to assist in outbreak investigation and control, laboratory diagnosis and verification,
clinical case management, and the delivery of vaccines and other therapeutic agents, equipment and logistics. Recent GOARN responses to diseases of zoonotic origin
include multiple outbreaks of SARS and highly pathogenic avian influenza (A/H5N1) in humans, Ebola and Marburg haemorrhagic fevers, Nipah virus disease, plague
and Rift Valley fever. In response to the profound effects of emerging zoonoses such as Nipah virus, SARS and human cases of influenza A/H5N1 in the Asia Pacific
Region, countries of the region in collaboration with the WHO South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regional Offices have adopted the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging
Diseases (WHO 2005b). The Strategy aims to minimise the health, economic and social impact of emerging diseases through a targeted program of capacity building for
public health surveillance and outbreak response in accordance with the core requirements of the IHR. Similar strategies are being implemented through a variety of
public health networks in other WHO regions. Reducing the risk of diseases acquired from animals is a key objective of the Asia Pacific Strategy, which describes a broad,
multinational, and multisectoral approach over the medium to long term. Success in the prevention and control of emerging zoonoses will require close collaboration
between local and national health, agriculture, wildlife and food safety authorities in parallel with risk reduction activities involving international organisations such as
WHO, FAO and OIE. The quality of pathogen surveillance in animals varies greatly among countries and typically does not include wildlife (Kuiken et al. 2005; see the
chapters by Childs et al. and by Stallknecht, this volume). The Terrestrial Animal Health Code (2005) (OIE 2005b) aims to assure the sanitary safety of international
trade in terrestrial animals and their products through health measures to be used by national veterinary authorities to avoid the transfer of agents pathogenic for
animals or humans, while avoiding unjustified sanitary barriers. The Terrestrial Code states that “countries shall make available to other countries, through the OIE,
whatever information is necessary to minimise the spread of important animal diseases and to assist in achieving better worldwide control of these diseases”. The
Terrestrial Code lists procedures for the international reporting of diseases, ethical rules for international trade, certification and animal welfare, the principles of import
risk analysis, and the organisation of 492 A. Merianos import and export procedures. There are a large number of notifiable animal diseases under international
surveillance: anthrax, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever, highly pathogenic avian influenza,
hydatid disease, Japanese encephalitis, leptospirosis, Nipah virus encephalitis, Q fever, Rift Valley fever, Salmonella enteritidis and S. typhimurium in poultry,
screwworm, trichinellosis, tularaemia, and West Nile fever have the potential to cause human disease. National disease control requirements under the Terrestrial Code
identify the need for a formal and ongoing system for detecting and investigating outbreaks of disease, procedures for the rapid collection and transport of clinical
specimens, laboratory investigation guidelines for diagnostic quality assurance and a system for recording, managing and analysing diagnostic and surveillance data. In
addition, the Terrestrial Code makes recommendations for the standardised monitoring of antimicrobials used in animal husbandry to evaluate usage patterns by animal
species, antimicrobial class, potency and type of use in order to evaluate antimicrobial use and detect the emergence of resistance. Antimicrobial resistance may also
have implications for antimicrobial efficacy in human health and in wildlife. Agricultural pests and diseases may spread across borders or be introduced through travel,
trade and the illegal trafficking of animals. Infectious agents can cause disease control emergencies, especially in developing countries with limited response capacity,
and may result in major economic losses. On occasion, extensive emergency operations with international assistance become necessary particularly if detection and
response are delayed. In 1994, the FAO established an Emergency Prevention System (EMPRES) for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases (FAO 2005) in
order to minimise the risk of such emergencies developing. EMPRES has four main components – early warning, early reaction, co-ordination and applied research – and
all are integral to preparedness planning for emerging infectious diseases. All countries should participate in regional, and where possible, global surveillance and
diagnostic networks for human, livestock and wildlife health, and enable the sharing of information to characterise risk, prevent disease spread, and enhance control
efforts. To be most effective, preparedness planning for emerging zoonoses requires a whole-of-government approach, clear command, control and coordination
structures across the health, agriculture and wildlife sectors, and appropriate funding of the human health and veterinary services for their disease alert and response
operations. Opportunities for shared training and involvement in multi-sectoral outbreak simulations should be identified to test operational communications,
networking and partnerships, and to identify gaps in preparedness across the various sectors. Countries should define the criteria (trigger points) for declaring a
national animal disease emergency and initiating whole-of-government action. The Surveillance and Response to Disease Emergence 493 availability of human, material
and financial resources, including technical expertise and surge capacity, should be assessed as part of preparedness planning for emerging diseases and linkages formed
with regional and global networks, such as a the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, that can provide emergency support to affected countries. Relevant local
trigger points for alert and response should be defined as part of emergency preparedness planning by all human and veterinary health services. 4 Elements of Early
Early warning and response systems for emerging
zoonoses require effective cross-jurisdictional, intersectoral and
interdisciplinary collaboration. Early warning systems have been
implemented at sub-national, national, regional and global levels. Networking, and linking
Warning and Response Systems for Emerging Zoonoses
individuals and agencies, will be key factors in building and sustaining
surveillance and response capacity against existing and emerging disease
threats . These activities can also provide the support needed in the areas where
key capacities, such as diagnostics, do not currently exist or are under-resourced and require development. Areas of
expertise considered critical to improve detection, monitoring and investigation of emerging infections include field epidemiology, clinical and veterinary sciences,
laboratory diagnostics, field ecology (mammalogy and entomology), behavioural science, medical anthropology, risk communication, social mobilisation (behaviour
change communication) and other related disciplines.
Zoonoses cause human extinction – different from other diseases
Quammen 12 [David, award-winning science writer, long-time columnist for
Outside magazine, writer for National Geographic, Harper's, Rolling Stone, the New
York Times Book Review and others, “Could the Next Big Animal-to-Human Disease
Wipe Us Out?”, The Guardian, pg. 29, Lexis, 9/29/12] MG
Infectious disease is all around us. It's one of the basic processes that ecologists study, along with
predation and competition. Predators are big beasts that eat their prey from outside. Pathogens (disease-causing agents, such
as viruses) are small beasts that eat their prey from within. Although infectious disease can seem grisly and dreadful, under
ordinary conditions, it's every bit as natural as what lions do to wildebeests and zebras. But conditions aren't always ordinary.
Just as predators have their accustomed prey, so do pathogens. And just as a lion might occasionally depart from its normal
behaviour - to kill a cow instead of a wildebeest, or a human instead of a zebra - so a pathogen can shift to a new target.
Aberrations occur. When
a pathogen leaps from an animal into a person, and
succeeds in establishing itself as an infectious presence, sometimes causing
illness or death, the result is a zoonosis. It's a mildly technical term, zoonosis, unfamiliar to most
people, but it helps clarify the biological complexities behind the ominous headlines about swine flu, bird flu, Sars, emerging
diseases in general, and the threat of a global pandemic. It's a word of the future, destined for heavy use in the 21st century.
Ebola and Marburg are zoonoses. So is bubonic plague. So was the so-called
Spanish influenza of 1918-1919, which had its source in a wild aquatic bird and emerged to kill as
many as 50 million people. All of the human influenzas are zoonoses. As are monkeypox, bovine tuberculosis, Lyme
disease, West Nile fever, rabies and a strange new affliction called Nipah encephalitis, which has killed pigs and pig farmers in
Malaysia. Each of these zoonoses reflects the action of a pathogen that can
"spillover", crossing into
people from other animals. Aids is a disease of zoonotic origin caused by a virus that, having reached humans through a
few accidental events in western and central Africa, now passes human-to-human. This form of interspecies leap is not rare;
about 60% of all human infectious diseases currently known either cross routinely or have recently crossed between other
animals and us. Some
of those - notably rabies - are familiar, widespread and still
horrendously lethal, killing humans by the thousands despite centuries of
efforts at coping with their effects. Others are new and inexplicably sporadic, claiming a few victims or a
few hundred, and then disappearing for years. Zoonotic pathogens can hide. The least conspicuous strategy is to lurk within
what's called a reservoir host: a living organism that carries the pathogen while suffering little or no illness. When a disease
seems to disappear between outbreaks, it's often still lingering nearby, within some reservoir host. A rodent? A bird? A
butterfly? A bat? To reside undetected is probably easiest wherever biological diversity is high and the ecosystem is relatively
undisturbed. The converse is also true: ecological disturbance causes diseases to emerge. Shake a tree and things fall out.
Michelle Barnes is an energetic, late 40s-ish woman, an avid rock climber and cyclist. Her auburn hair, she told me cheerily,
came from a bottle. It approximates the original colour, but the original is gone. In 2008, her hair started falling out; the rest
went grey "pretty much overnight". This was among the lesser effects of a mystery illness that had nearly killed her during
January that year, just after she'd returned from Uganda. Her story paralleled the one Jaap Taal had told me about Astrid, with
several key differences - the main one being that Michelle Barnes was still alive. Michelle and her husband, Rick Taylor, had
wanted to see mountain gorillas, too. Their guide had taken them through Maramagambo Forest and into Python Cave. They,
too, had to clamber across those slippery boulders. As a rock climber, Barnes said, she tends to be very conscious of where she
places her hands. No, she didn't touch any guano. No, she was not bumped by a bat. By late afternoon they were back, watching
the sunset. It was Christmas evening 2007. They arrived home on New Year's Day. On 4 January, Barnes woke up feeling as if
someone had driven a needle into her skull. She was achy all over, feverish. "And then, as the day went on, I started developing
a rash across my stomach." The rash spread. "Over the next 48 hours, I just went down really fast." By the time Barnes turned
up at a hospital in suburban Denver, she was dehydrated; her white blood count was imperceptible; her kidneys and liver had
begun shutting down. An infectious disease specialist, Dr Norman K Fujita, arranged for her to be tested for a range of
infections that might be contracted in Africa. All came back negative, including the test for Marburg. Gradually her body
regained strength and her organs began to recover. After 12 days, she left hospital, still weak and anaemic, still undiagnosed.
In March she saw Fujita on a follow-up visit and he had her serum tested again for Marburg. Again, negative. Three more
months passed, and Barnes, now grey-haired, lacking her old energy, suffering abdominal pain, unable to focus, got an email
from a journalist she and Taylor had met on the Uganda trip, who had just seen a news article. In the Netherlands, a woman
had died of Marburg after a Ugandan holiday during which she had visited a cave full of bats. Barnes spent the next 24 hours
Googling every article on the case she could find. Early the following Monday morning, she was back at Dr Fujita's door. He
agreed to test her a third time for Marburg. This time a lab technician crosschecked the third sample, and then the first sample.
The new results went to Fujita, who called Barnes: "You're now an honorary infectious disease doctor. You've self-diagnosed,
and the Marburg test came back positive." The Marburg virus had reappeared in Uganda in 2007. It was a small outbreak,
affecting four miners, one of whom died, working at a site called Kitaka Cave. But Joosten's death, and Barnes's diagnosis,
implied a change in the potential scope of the situation. That local Ugandans were dying of Marburg was a severe concern sufficient to bring a response team of scientists in haste. But if tourists, too, were involved, tripping in and out of some pythoninfested Marburg repository, unprotected, and then boarding their return flights to other continents, the place was not just a
peril for Ugandan miners and their families. It was also an international threat. The first team of scientists had collected about
800 bats from Kitaka Cave for dissecting and sampling, and marked and released more than 1,000, using beaded collars coded
with a number. That team, including scientist Brian Amman, had found live Marburg virus in five bats. Entering Python Cave
after Joosten's death, another team of scientists, again including Amman, came across one of the beaded collars they had
placed on captured bats three months earlier and 30 miles away. "It confirmed my suspicions that these bats are moving,"
Amman said - and moving not only through the forest but from one roosting site to another. Travel of individual bats between
far-flung roosts implied circumstances whereby Marburg virus might ultimately be transmitted all across Africa, from one bat
encampment to another. It voided the comforting assumption that this virus is strictly localised. And it highlighted the
complementary question: why don't outbreaks of Marburg virus disease happen more often? Marburg is only one instance to
which that question applies. Why not more Ebola? Why not more Sars? In the case of Sars, the scenario could have been very
much worse. Apart from the 2003 outbreak and the aftershock cases in early 2004, it hasn't recurred. . . so far. Eight thousand
cases are relatively few for such an explosive infection; 774 people died, not 7 million. Several factors contributed to limiting
the scope and impact of the outbreak, of which humanity's good luck was only one. Another was the speed and excellence of
the laboratory diagnostics - finding the virus and identifying it. Still another was the brisk efficiency with which cases were
isolated, contacts were traced and quarantine measures were instituted, first in southern China, then in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Hanoi and Toronto. If the virus had arrived in a different sort of big city - more loosely governed, full of poor people, lacking
first-rate medical institutions - it might have burned through a much larger segment of humanity. One further factor, possibly
the most crucial, was inherent in the way Sars affects the human body: symptoms tend to appear in a person before, rather
than after, that person becomes highly infectious. That allowed many Sars cases to be recognised, hospitalised and placed in
isolation before they hit their peak of infectivity. With influenza and many other diseases, the order is reversed. That probably
helped account for the scale of worldwide misery and death during the 1918-1919 influenza. And that infamous global
pandemic occurred in the era before globalisation. Everything nowadays moves around the planet faster, including viruses.
When the Next Big One comes, it will likely conform to the same perverse pattern as the 1918 influenza: high infectivity
preceding notable symptoms. That will help it move through cities and airports like an angel of death. The Next Big One is a
subject that disease scientists around the world often address. The most recent big one is Aids, of which the eventual total
bigness cannot even be predicted - about 30 million deaths, 34 million living people infected, and with no end in sight.
Fortunately, not every virus goes airborne from one host to another. If HIV-1 could, you and I might already be dead. If the
rabies virus could, it would be the most horrific pathogen on the planet. The influenzas are well adapted for airborne
transmission, which is why a new strain can circle the world within days. The Sars virus travels this route, too, or anyway by
the respiratory droplets of sneezes and coughs - hanging in the air of a hotel corridor, moving through the cabin of an
aeroplane - and that capacity, combined with its case fatality rate of almost 10%, is what made it so scary in 2003 to the people
who understood it best. Human-to-human transmission is the crux. That capacity is what separates a bizarre, awful, localised,
intermittent and mysterious disease (such as Ebola) from a global pandemic. Have you noticed the persistent, low-level buzz
about avian influenza, the strain known as H5N1, among disease experts over the past 15 years? That's because avian flu
worries them deeply, though it hasn't caused many human fatalities. Swine flu comes and goes periodically in the human
population (as it came and went during 2009), sometimes causing a bad pandemic and sometimes (as in 2009) not so bad as
expected; but avian flu resides in a different category of menacing possibility. It worries the flu scientists because they know
that H5N1 influenza is extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality. As yet, there have been a relatively low number of
cases, and it is poorly transmissible, so far, from human to human. It'll kill you if you catch it, very likely, but you're unlikely to
catch it except by butchering an infected chicken. But if H5N1 mutates or reassembles itself in just the right way, if it adapts for
human-to-human transmission, it could become the biggest and fastest killer disease since 1918. It got to Egypt in 2006 and
has been especially problematic for that country. As of August 2011, there were 151 confirmed cases, of which 52 were fatal.
That represents more than a quarter of all the world's known human cases of bird flu since H5N1 emerged in 1997. But here's
a critical fact: those unfortunate Egyptian patients all seem to have acquired the virus directly from birds. This indicates that
the virus hasn't yet found an efficient way to pass from one person to another. Two aspects of the situation are dangerous,
according to biologist Robert Webster. The first is that Egypt, given its recent political upheavals, may be unable to staunch an
outbreak of transmissible avian flu, if one occurs. His second concern is shared by influenza researchers and public health
officials around the globe: with all that mutating, with all that contact between people and their infected birds, the virus could
hit upon a genetic configuration making it highly transmissible among people. "As long as H5N1 is out there in the world,"
Webster told me, "there is the possibility of disaster. . . There is the theoretical possibility that it can acquire the ability to
transmit human-to-human." He paused. "And then God help us." We're
unique in the history of
mammals. No other primate has ever weighed upon the planet to anything like the degree we do. In ecological terms, we
are almost paradoxical: large-bodied and long-lived but grotesquely abundant. We are an outbreak. And here's the thing about
outbreaks: they end. In some cases they end after many years, in others they end rather soon. In some cases they end
gradually, in others they end with a crash. In certain cases, they end and recur and end again. Populations of tent
caterpillars, for example, seem
to rise steeply and fall sharply on a cycle of anywhere from five to 11
The crash endings are dramatic, and for a long while they seemed mysterious. What could
account for such sudden and recurrent collapses? One possible factor is
infectious disease, and viruses in particular.
years.
Links
Fusion centers key to solve natural disasters—they coordinate
information to respond to threats
Harris 9 [Blake, contributing editor, “Fusion Centers May Strengthen Emergency
Management”, Government Technology, 8/19/08,
http://www.govtech.com/security/Fusion-Centers-May-Strengthen-EmergencyManagement.html?page=3] MG
In the law enforcement and intelligence arena, the push has been to get various agencies effectively sharing information and
working in tighter coordination - something they didn't always do before 9/11. This led to the creation of what the law
enforcement community calls the "fusion center." Though
most think of homeland security
intelligence functions when they think of the fusion center, the concept has always
included an all-hazards approach, according to Andrew Lluberes, director of communications for the
Intelligence and Analysis Office of Public Affairs, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "The concept of
the fusion center is to give the federal government and the states an
opportunity to share information and intelligence, and that's not limited to
terrorism," Lluberes said. "DHS's jurisdiction obviously includes terrorism, but a lot of other things as
well: natural disasters chemical, weapons of mass destruction and just basic law enforcement." Lluberes said some
past natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, didn't have the benefit of
working fusion centers. However, he said fusion centers are beginning to mature
and emergency managers will benefit from their existence. "As a conduit to
share information and intelligence, they certainly would be used in a future
natural disaster," said Lluberes. According to the DHS, there are nearly 60 fusion centers nationwide and more are
being formed. Each has unique characteristics because of local priorities and concerns. A fusion center in Arizona or Texas, for
example, might involve Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Drug Enforcement Administration officials because of their
proximity to the Mexican border. Though most fusion centers concentrate on law enforcement and homeland security matter,
their operations can provide lessons for EOC managers. Fusion of Data The
ultimate goal of any fusion
center is to prevent terrorist attacks and to respond to natural disasters and man-made
threats quickly and efficiently. But as a Congressional Research Service report also noted, there is no one
model for how a center should be structured. Although many of the centers initially had purely counterterrorism goals, most
have gravitated toward an all-crimes and even a broader all-hazards approach. "Data
fusion involves the
exchange of information from different sources - including law enforcement,
public safety and the private sector - and, with analysis, can result in
meaningful and actionable intelligence and information," noted a Department of Justice
guidelines paper. "The fusion process turns this information and intelligence into
actionable knowledge. Fusion also allows relentless re-evaluation of existing data in context with new data in
order to provide constant updates. The public safety and private-sector components are integral
in the fusion process because they provide fusion centers with crime-related information, including risk
and threat assessments, and subject-matter experts who can aid in threat
identification." Indeed, it's this informational process that extends the role of the
fusion center from an antiterrorism focus to general law enforcement and perhaps other
emergencies and disasters. One such fusion center is Chicago's Crime Prevention Information Center (CPIC),
which works on the antiterrorism initiative, and general law enforcement. The center allows rapid discovery of possible
crimes by recording sounds, such as gunshots, and showing police their exact locations on a computer screen. About 30 fulltime detectives, police officers and supervisors staff CPIC. Each of the 35 suburban departments working with the center lends
officers to help field calls for information. Additionally representatives from the FBI, Cook County Sheriff's Office and other
federal agencies provide liaison personnel to the center. According to Chicago Police Cmdr. David Sobczyk, head of the
Deployment Operations Center, of which CPIC is an extension, focusing both on crime and terrorism strengthens the
antiterrorism mission. Not only are everyday crimes sometimes precursors to a terrorist attack, but more importantly, having
a center that is constantly being exercised 24/7 by responding to actual public safety incidents only makes staff more skilled
and effective in dealing with a terrorist threat. This combined mission focus is evident as soon as one enters the CPIC room. As
well as computer screens on the walls, there are TVs that show streams of news 24/7 from American and overseas news
channels, from places like Israel, China or Arab states. While it continues to evolve and is improving all the time, the $1 million
CPIC - funded with a homeland security grant, through seized drug money and from the Chicago PD's operational budget - has
become a model for other jurisdictions. This prompted the DHS to engage Sobczyk to give presentations on CPIC to other law
enforcement entities around the country.
Data contextualization is key to emergency response—key to effective decision
making
Eaneff, 07[Charles, former Acting Executive Director DHS Office of State and Local
Law Enforcement and a Naval Postgraduate School alumnus, “THE IMPACT OF
CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND FUSION ON PERCEIVED VALUE AND QUALITY OF
UNCLASSIFIED TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE”, March 2007
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a467124.pdf]//AK
Multiple initiatives, including the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) and the Joint Regional Information
Exchange System (JRIES), as well as supporting directives such as National Capability Specific Priority 3.2.1: Strengthening
Information Sharing and Collaboration Capabilities, have ensured that non-traditional recipients (NTR) in law enforcement,
fire, emergency medical services (EMS), emergency management, public health and the private sector are receiving
unclassified intelligence products from multiple sources including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal
Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Fusion Centers, Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), and Terrorism Early Warning Groups
(TEWG). However, simply pushing intelligence products to non traditional recipients (NTR) is not enough. Recipients must
possess enough contextual background to effectively utilize the intelligence products in order for this strategy to be successful.
Unclassified intelligence distribution must be useful, easy to use, deliberate and coordinated, maximizing recipients’ ability to
effectively utilize the intelligence, regardless of the time of day, day of week, or location of the recipient. We can do better in
this regard. As discussed in a Markle Foundation Working Group Report, Networking of Federal Government Agencies with
State and Local Government and Private Sector Entities, “…adequate context for homeland security providers to effectively
utilize information is specific, tailored for each local entity, rapidly disseminated, and does not overburden recipients with
vague or irrelevant information.”1 The
Final 9/11 Commission Report noted the
importance of context in decision making, reporting that the President was
provided intelligence “news without… much context” prior to September 11,
2001, contributing to a failure of decision makers to recognize that Bin Laden
posed a “novel danger.”2 A similar lack of context in the evaluation of Iraq intelligence assessments contributed
to a failure to understand Saddam Hussein’s perception of the outside world.3 At the local level, in 2005, Police Chief Patrick
Miller found that “There is profound belief amongst law enforcement leaders in California that the essential mechanisms for
information sharing are poor at best and arriving at some consensus on how to fix that problem was far more important than
examining leadership models and future impacts.”4 The 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act reinforces
this charge for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), documenting their responsibility to “…develop better methods for
the sharing of intelligence with State and local law enforcement agencies…” with similar concerns, the General Accounting
Office has identified at least 11 separate information sharing authorities and initiatives since 9/11. 5,6 These findings and
directives make it clear that
one mission of the federal government is to effectively
involve all public safety providers in homeland security through improved
information sharing. Effective involvement of NTR would in part result in an
improved disaster response system, reduction of man made disasters , and
“fusion” of emergency response , preparedness, recovery, mitigation, and
critical infrastructure protection .7 Critical decision making is not limited to Chiefs of Police, Fire or
Public Health, but includes professionals at every level of organizations. In fact, those “on the street,” maintain the most public
contact, and as such, make some of the most critical homeland security decisions. While the media and public may focus on
police chiefs, command officers, detectives, or other high visibility law enforcement positions in homeland security, patrol
officers have consistently been shown to have the greatest impact on crime. As described by Captain Dennis Potter, Operations
Commander for the Columbine school shootings, “When something really bad happens, the initial response strategies are
developed from the front seat of a patrol car, not from a command officers desk…”8 Captain Potter’s observation reflects an
understanding that intelligence is critical in day to day tactical decision making, not just in long term strategic planning.
Research documents what police executives know about the critical nature of street level operations, finding that 80% of
crimes are solved by patrol operations, not detective work.9 Whether planning long term strategic or short term tactical
operations, it is critical to ensure that street level decision makers have the intelligence they need. This is the audience of
unclassified intelligence operations, and while it may not be practical to provide classified intelligence to these millions of
professionals, it is imperative that they are provided the very best unclassified intelligence possible.
Turns the Case – Racism
Natural disasters disproportionately affect underprivileged communities—this
exacerbates racial disparities—turns case
CTST 10 [Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, “Disasters and Poverty Natural
Disasters Disproportionately Affect the World’s Poor”, State of New Jersey
Department of Human Services, 1/16/10,
http://www.state.nj.us/humanservices/emergency/DisastersandPoverty.pdf] MG
Over 90 percent of deaths due to natural disasters occur in poor countries. Even in developed countries,
poor citizens are most affected by disasters. Poor residents of New Orleans
bore the heaviest loss of life, health and property due to Hurricane Katrina . An
event of similar physical magnitude is likely to cause more deaths in a developing country than in a developed country. The
disparity in disaster outcomes between rich and poor can be understood as a function of both pre-event vulnerability and
post-event response. Factors
such as geography, personal resources, community infrastructure and
political stability all impact the occurrence and consequences of natural disasters. Social
instability may also accompany poverty particularly when there are large disparities in the distribution of wealth and income.
Such disparities may be marked by different language preferences. For example, in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western
Hemisphere, French is often taken as the language of the privileged and Creole the language of the poor. “Just because you
speak French does not mean you are smart” can be a call of the poor and disadvantaged who are also stigmatized and denied
services as well as respect. Geography: The poor are more likely to live in less expensive and environmentally vulnerable areas
such as flood plains, volcano bases, seismically active areas or tornado alleys. Environmental exploitation, often made for
economic reasons (for example hillside deforestation), increases vulnerability to natural disasters such as landslides. Personal
Resources: Poverty is a well-known determinant of poor physical health, and the poor may therefore be more vulnerable to
adverse physical health outcomes in the wake of a disaster. Malnourished, non-immunized and/or chronically ill persons may
be less able to withstand the physical stress of a disaster. Furthermore, poor persons who have been focused on daily survival
are less likely to have resources—extra food, fuel or money—to use in the event of a disaster. When provided sufficient food,
the body’s response of moving from famine to adequate nutrition can bring its own physical changes and at times symptoms.
Infrastructure: The poor often live in sub-standard housing that is more vulnerable to collapse and destruction during an
earthquake or other disaster. Building codes are often not adopted or enforced.
Poor communities often
lack transportation and communication infrastructure to facilitate an
adequate disaster response . Health systems in poor countries are often underresourced even prior to a
disaster, and are quickly stretched beyond capacity in the face of increased injuries and illness. Political Instability: Political
instability in many poor countries can hamper the ability to organize a coordinated disaster response. Limited
resources can also expose intra-community schisms—sometimes along racial,
ethnic, or religious lines—that further complicates necessary community
coordination. Disasters open these fault lines of a society composed of
differences in economic privilege, race and religion. Immigration out of disaster areas by those
able to do so can be dramatic after a disaster. At times this further exacerbates the economic
disparities as the wealthy are able to leave and the poor are not. The poor may also use
illegal and risky means of immigration (e.g. “boat people”) in order to find safety, nutrition, health and work for themselves
and their families. Vulnerable populations: In the face of scarce resources, women, children, the elderly and the mentally or
physically ill, may be particularly vulnerable to neglect and exploitation. Children
and women of poverty
are particularly vulnerable to exploitation as they try to obtain food and
safety in a disaster community with none. Recovery from Disaster: When other countries bring
resources to disaster impoverished nations, they can also create expectations that cannot be sustained after the responders
leave. Working with the disaster regions populations and recognizing the need for sustainable recovery is a critical ingredient
of recovery over the years that are required after a major disaster.
Disadvantage Links
Politics Links
Defund Fusion Centers Popular
Defunding’s popular with Republicans
Keating 2/24 – writer for the Boston Globe, (William, Boston Globe, February 24 2015,
“Homeland Security funding is not for political games,”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/23/homeland-security-funding-not-forpolitical-games/CSlSszJQ2vksspeCPjDzvM/story.html) //DS
Sixteen months later, here we are again. Except this time the only department at risk of a shutdown is the primary agency
Even if a
shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security were averted, it’s likely congressional
Republicans will continue to revert to stopgap measures where funding levels are frozen at
inadequate rates. Doing so leaves our country vulnerable to emerging threats and new
challenges that face us — among others, ISIS and cybersecurity.
This high-stakes game of chicken could have been avoided. When Congress voted in December on a budget
for the remainder of the fiscal year, it funded every federal department and agency through
September 2015 — except Homeland Security. Most Homeland Security operations will cease to be funded
tasked with ensuring the safety of our country and our citizens at home while deterring threats from abroad.
as of Friday if an agreement cannot be reached.
For those in Congress calling the shots, this isn’t about funding levels. It’s about waging political war.
The department wasn’t funded in December due to Republican leaders’ efforts to
undermine President Obama’s intended executive actions on immigration reform. They are
trying to leverage homeland security funding in order to prevent the implementation of the
president’s executive actions. This is dangerous, irresponsible, and shameful. It’s an abuse of power.
A shutdown of the Department of Homeland security would have serious consequences.
Training and research programs that assist our local law enforcement in preventing attacks would cease. The databases
monitoring suspected terrorists and criminals would not be updated. Thousands of workers would be furloughed and the ones
that are deemed “essential” to keeping our country safe — such as members of the Coast Guard — would work without pay.
And for states enduring unprecedented storms, such as ours, there would be no new, immediate disaster assistance or
reimbursements from the federal Emergency Management Agency.
What does the congressional mishandling of the Department of Homeland Security say to those who serve as our first
responders, or to those responsible for protecting our borders and ports? And what would a shutdown say to the rest of the
world about our priorities, our commitment to stopping terrorism, and our ability to keep our own citizens safe? What if an
attack happened during a shutdown? How quickly would we be able to mount an efficient response?
Defunding is popular – fusion centers perceived as wasteful..
O’Harrow Jr 12 – award winning political journalist for the Washington Post (Robert,
Washington Post, October 2, 2012, “DHS ‘fusion centers’ portrayed as pools of ineptitude
and civil liberties intrusions” http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/dhs-fusioncenters-portrayed-as-pools-of-ineptitude-and-civil-libertiesintrusions/2012/10/02/10014440-0cb1-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html) //DS
An initiative aimed at improving intelligence sharing has done little to make the country more secure, despite as much as
$1.4 billion in federal spending, according to a two-year examination by Senate investigators. The nationwide
network of offices known as “fusion centers” was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to address concerns
that local, state and federal authorities were not sharing information effectively about potential terrorist threats. But after nine
years — and regular praise from officials at the Department of Homeland Security — the 77 fusion centers have become pools
of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions, according to a scathing 141-page report by the Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations. The creation and operation of the fusion centers
were promoted by the administration of President George W. Bush and later the Obama administration as
essential weapons in the fight to build a nationwide network that would keep the country
safe from terrorism. The idea was to promote increased collaboration and cooperation
among all levels of law enforcement across the country. But the report documents spending
on items that did little to help share intelligence, including gadgets such as “shirt button”
cameras, $6,000 laptops and big-screen televisions. One fusion center spent $45,000 on a
decked-out SUV that a city official used for commuting. “In reality, the Subcommittee
investigation found that the fusion centers often produced irrelevant, useless or
inappropriate intelligence reporting to DHS, and many produced no intelligence reporting
whatsoever,” the report said. The bipartisan report, released by subcommittee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and
ranking minority member Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), portrays the fusion center system as ineffective and
criticizes the Department of Homeland Security for poor supervision. In a response Tuesday, the
department condemned the report and defended the fusion centers, saying the Senate investigators relied on out-of-date data.
The Senate investigators examined fusion center reports in 2009 and 2010 and looked at activity, training and policies over
nine years, according to the report. The statement also said the Senate investigators misunderstood the role of fusion centers,
“which is to provide state and local law enforcement analytic support in furtherance of their day-to-day efforts to protect local
communities from violence, including that associated with terrorism.”
Fusion centers politically controversial – eliminating them is perceived as a win.
Iskoff 12 - American investigative journalist for NBC News, (Michael, October 2, 2012, NBC
News, “Homeland Security 'fusion' centers spy on citizens, produce 'shoddy' work, report
says,” http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/02/14187433-homelandsecurity-fusion-centers-spy-on-citizens-produce-shoddy-work-report-says) //DS
The ranking
Republican on a Senate panel on Wednesday accused the
Department of Homeland Security of hiding embarrassing information about
its so-called "fusion" intelligence sharing centers, charging that the program has wasted
hundreds of millions of dollars while contributing little to the country's counterterrorism efforts. In a 107-page
report released late Tuesday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said that Homeland Security has
spent up to $1.4 billion funding fusion centers -- in effect, regional intelligence sharing centers--
that have
produced "useless" reports while at the same time collecting information on the innocent activities of American Muslims that
The fusion centers, created under President George W. Bush and expanded
under President Barack Obama, consist of special teams of federal, state and local officials collecting and
may have violated a federal privacy law.
analyzing intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country. They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano as “one of the centerpieces” of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the
ranking Republican on the panel, charged Wednesday that Homeland Security had tried to bury evidence of problems at the
centers. "Unfortunately, DHS has resisted oversight of these centers," he said. "The Department opted not to inform Congress
or the public of serious problems plaguing its fusion centers and broader intelligence efforts. When this subcommittee
requested documents that would help it identify these issues, the department initially resisted turning them over, arguing that
they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all.
The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help generate the reforms that will help keep our country safe." A
spokesman for Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News Tuesday that the Senate report was "out of date,
inaccurate and misleading." Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Napolitano, said the Senate panel "refused to review relevant
data, including important intelligence information pertinent to their findings." Another Homeland Security official, who spoke
with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the department has made improvements to the fusion centers and that the
skills of officials working in them are “evolving and maturing.” The American Civil Liberties Union also issued a statement
saying the report underscores problems that it and other civil liberty groups have been flagging for years. "The
ACLU
warned back in 2007 that fusion centers posed grave threats to Americans' privacy and civil
liberties, and that they needed clear guidelines and independent oversight," said Michael German,
ACLU senior policy counsel. "This report is a good first step, and we call upon Congress to hold public hearings to investigate
fusion centers and their ongoing abuses.” In addition to the value of much of the fusion centers’ work, the Senate
panel found evidence of what it called “troubling” reports by some centers that may have
violated the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. citizens. The evidence cited in the report could
fuel a continuing controversy over claims that the FBI and some local police departments,
notably New York City’s, have spied on American Muslims without a justifiable law
enforcement reason for doing so. Among the examples in the report: One fusion center drafted a
report on a list of reading suggestions prepared by a Muslim community group, titled “Ten Book Recommendations for Every
Muslim.” The report noted that four of the authors were listed in a terrorism database, but a Homeland Security reviewer in
Washington chastised the fusion center, saying, “We cannot report on books and other writings” simply because the authors
are in a terrorism database. “The writings themselves are protected by the First Amendment unless you can establish that
something in the writing indicates planning or advocates violent or other criminal activity.” A fusion center in California
prepared a report about a speaker at a Muslim center in Santa Cruz who was giving a daylong motivational talk—and a lecture
on “positive parenting.” No link to terrorism was alleged. Another fusion center drafted a report on a U.S. citizen speaking at a
local mosque that speculated that -- since the speaker had been listed in a terrorism data base — he may have
been attempting “to conduct fundraising and recruiting” for a foreign terrorist group. “The number of things that scare me
about this report are almost too many to write into this (form),” a Homeland Security reviewer wrote after analyzing the
report. The reviewer noted that “the nature of this event is constitutionally protected activity (public speaking, freedom of
assembly, freedom of religion.)” The Senate panel found 40 reports -- including the three listed above -- that were drafted at
fusion centers by Homeland Security officials, then later “nixed” by officials in Washington after reviewers “raised concerns
the documents potentially endangered the civil liberties or legal privacy protections of the U.S. persons they
mentioned.” Despite being scrapped, however, the Senate report concluded that “these reports should not have been drafted
at all.” It also noted that the reports were stored at Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., for a year or more
after they had been canceled —a potential violation of the U.S. Privacy Act, which prohibits federal agencies from storing
information on U.S. citizens’ First Amendment-protected activities if there is no valid reason to do so. The report said the
retention of these reports also appears to contradict Homeland Security’s own guidelines, which state that once a
determination is made that a document should not be retained, “The U.S person identifying information is to be destroyed
immediately.” The investigation was led by the Republican staff of the subcommittee but the report was approved by chairman
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich and Coburn. It stated that much basic information about the fusion centers – including exactly how
much they cost the federal government — was difficult to obtain. Although the fusion centers are overseen by Homeland
Security, they are funded primarily through grants to local governments by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Although Homeland Security “was unable to provide an accurate tally,” the panel estimated the federal dollars
on the centers between 2003 and 2011 at between $289 million and $1.4 billion.
spent
Defund Fusion Centers Unpopular
Local resource-sharing programs have proved successful in combating terrorism
– the plan is unpopular.
CNN 11 – Cable News Network, (CNN, August 3, 2011, “Obama: Feds to fight violent
extremism with local partnerships,”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/03/obama.violent.extremism/#42628059) //DS
CNN) -- The federal government will fight domestic violent extremism advanced by al Qaeda by empowering and relying on
America's vast network of local community institutions rather than creating new programs with additional spending, President
Barack Obama announced Wednesday.
Such partnerships and resource sharing between federal and local governments have already
proved effective in combating gang problems, drugs, school safety issues and hate crimes,
according to the president's new plan to counter terrorists' propaganda campaign.
The federal government's "most effective role" in preventing violent extremism is "as a
facilitator, convener, and source of information," the eight-page report said. "The Federal
Government will often be ill-suited to intervene in the niches of society where radicalization to violence takes place, but it
can foster partnerships to support communities through its connections to local
government, law enforcement, mayor's offices, the private sector, local service providers,
academia, and many others who can help prevent violent extremism," the president's initiative said.
"Federal departments and agencies have begun expanding support to local stakeholders and practitioners who are on the
ground and positioned to develop grassroots partnerships with the communities they serve," the report said. Countering al
Qaeda's violent ideology and its portrayal of the United States as an enemy to Islam is an important part of the nation's
comprehensive strategy to defeat the terrorist group, but Obama pointed out in a preface letter to the report that al Qaeda
already has successfully recruited and radicalized people in the U.S. The letter cited as evidence the Fort Hood attack in 2009
in which 13 people were killed. In the "Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States" report,
the federal government said it will build "a robust training program with rigorous curriculum standards" to train local law,
prison and government agencies on potential violent extremism and to share accurate intelligence and research on its
prevention. Also, the government will share information about threats to incite violence and respond to community
complaints about government actions and policies. "The
federal government, with its connections
to diverse networks across the country, has a unique ability to draw together the
constellation of previously unconnected efforts and programs to form a more cohesive
enterprise against violent extremism," the report said. The president cited three models of how the
federal government has supported local initiatives fighting other different community issues. The U.S. Justice Department has
laid out a framework in which local
agencies can leverage federal and state resources in fighting
street gangs. Homeland Security and the Justice Department have a program to build trust among police
and local civil liberty advocates by holding roundtables on how to distinguish between "innocent cultural behaviors" and
conduct that may be "terrorism precursors," the report said. Also, the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and
Human Services provide guidance to local agencies on how to access grants to create safe schools, fight youths' substance
abuse and promote early childhood development, the report said.
‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, in the context of federal surveillance, is
unpopular with Republicans
Inquisitr 7/26 – news source (Inquisitr, July 26 2015, “How ‘Black Lives Matter’ Grew
From A Movement To The Subject Of Federal Surveillance,”
http://www.inquisitr.com/2284050/how-black-lives-matter-grew-from-a-movement-tothe-subject-of-federal-surveillance/) //DS
Now that Black Lives Matter has organized itself, it has gained greater visibility as a cohesive group when they interrupted
Phoenix’s Netroots Nation Conference where Democratic
presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and
Bernie Sanders were speaking. The candidates didn’t fare well with the Black Lives Matter
group, forcing an apology from O’Malley and a second attempt to curry favor by Sanders, who
spoke at a recent meeting in Louisiana, according to MSNBC. “Black lives do matter, and we must value black lives. Anybody
who saw the recent Sandra Bland tape understands that tragically, racism is alive and well in America. I don’t think anybody
believes that a middle-class white woman would have been yanked out of her car, thrown on the ground, assaulted and then
ended up jail because she made a minor traffic violation.” Aside
from a few retorts from the Republican
base, including Jeb Bush’s scoff at O’Malley’s apology and Ken Cucinnelli’s offense at the
movement‘s implication, Black Lives Matter has not been able to gain ground among the
GOP. While Fox News reports Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors is still seeking an opportunity with a Republican
audience, the Black Lives Matter movement has, however, gained the attention of a very interested third party – the federal
government.
Loser’s Lose
Obama’s prioritizes anti-terrorist support includes fusion centers – plan is a
loss.
White House 11 – The White House, (December 2011, p.5-11, Executive Office of the
President of the United States, https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/sipfinal.pdf) //DS
The Obama Administration continues to prioritize and stress the critical importance of CVE
in the Homeland. Given the complexities of addressing this threat and the uniqueness of the operating environment in
the United States, the Administration recognizes the potential to do more harm than good if our
Nation’s approach and actions are not dutifully considered and deliberated. Throughout this process, careful consideration
was given to the rule of law and constitutional principles, particularly those that address civil rights and civil liberties. With
those principles in mind, we noted that departments and agencies with domestically focused mandates have an array of tools
and capabilities that can be leveraged to prevent violent extremism, though some have limited experience in the national
security arena. This necessitated a deliberative and carefully calibrated approach with an extensive evaluative period to fully
address their potential roles and participation, which for some entailed thinking outside their traditional mandates and areas
of work. After assessing how individuals are radicalized and recruited to violence in the United States, the
Administration established an accelerated process, led by the National Security Staff (NSS),
to develop the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners and the SIP. An Interagency
Policy Committee (IPC) on countering and preventing violent extremism in the United States was established—with Assistant
and Deputy Assistant Secretary-level representatives from across government—to consider roles and responsibilities,
potential activities, guiding principles, and how best to coordinate and synchronize our efforts. The
IPC, with support
from specialist sub-IPCs, drafted our first national strategy on preventing violent extremism
in the United States, which was approved by Deputies from the various departments and
agencies and signed by the President. • The following departments and agencies were involved in the
deliberations and approval process: the Departments of State (State), the Treasury, Defense (DOD), Justice (DOJ), Commerce,
Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Education (EDU), Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security (DHS), as well as the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). To develop the SIP, the NSS tasked
NCTC with coordinating the first comprehensive baseline of activities across the United States Government related to
countering and preventing violent extremism in the United States, which constitutes the ongoing activities outlined in the SIP.
This included CVE-specific initiatives, as well as activities that were not developed for CVE purposes, but nonetheless may
indirectly contribute to the overall goals of the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners. These activities were aligned
with objectives and sub-objectives—based on the strategy and approved by the IPC—to assess our overall effort and identify
gaps. The IPC then considered ongoing and potential actions to address these gaps, which form the basis of planned activities
outlined in the SIP. The SIP was approved by Deputies from the various departments and agencies in November 2011.
Compliance with the Rule of Law A fundamental precept of the SIP is that the Federal Government’s actions must be consistent
with the Constitution and in compliance with U.S. laws and regulations. Departments and agencies are responsible for
identifying and complying with legal restrictions governing their activities and respective authorities. Compliance with the
rule of law, particularly ensuring protection of First Amendment rights, is central to our National Strategy for Empowering
Local Partners and the execution of the SIP. Crosscutting and Supportive Activities There are fundamental activities that are
critical to our success and cut across the objectives of the SIP. These include: (1) whole-of-government coordination; (2)
leveraging existing public safety, violence prevention, and community resilience programming; (3) coordination of domestic
and international CVE efforts, consistent with legal limits; and (4) addressing technology and virtual space. In many instances,
these crosscutting and supportive activities describe the ongoing activities of departments and agencies in fulfilling their
broader missions. As they implement new initiatives and programs in support of the SIP, departments and agencies will
ensure these enabling activities appropriately guide their efforts. 1. Whole-of-Government Coordination Leveraging the wide
range of tools, capabilities, and resources of the United States Government in a coordinated manner is essential for success.
Traditional national security or law enforcement agencies such as DHS, DOJ, and the FBI will execute many of the programs
and activities outlined in the SIP. However, as the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners states, we must also use a
broader set of good governance programs, “including those that promote immigrant integration and civic engagement, protect
civil rights, and provide social services, which may also help prevent radicalization that leads to violence.” To this end,
agencies such as EDU and HHS, which have substantial expertise in engaging communities and delivering services, also play a
role. This does not mean the missions and priorities of these partners will change or that their efforts will become narrowly
focused on national security. Their inclusion stems from our recognition that radicalization to violence depends on a variety of
factors, which in some instances may be most effectively addressed by departments and agencies that historically have not
been responsible for national security or law enforcement. These non-security partners, including specific components within
DOJ and DHS, have an array of tools that can contribute to this effort by providing indirect but meaningful impact on CVE,
including after school programs, networks of community-based organizations that provide assistance to new immigrants, and
violence prevention programs. We will coordinate activities, where appropriate, to support the CVE effort while ensuring we
do not change the core missions and functions of these departments and agencies. 2. Leveraging Existing Public Safety,
Violence Prevention, and Resilience Programming While preventing violent extremism is an issue of national importance, it is
one of many safety and security challenges facing our Nation. As we enter an era of increased fiscal constraints, we must
ensure our approach is tailored to take advantage of current programs and leverages existing resources. Our efforts therefore
will be supported, where appropriate, by emphasizing opportunities to address CVE within available resources related to
public safety, violence prevention, and building resilience. 3. Coordination of Domestic and International Efforts While always
ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations, we must ensure a high level of coordination between our domestic
and international efforts to address violent extremism. Although both the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners
and the SIP specifically address preventing violent extremism in the United States, the delineation between domestic and
international is becoming increasingly less rigid. Violent extremists operating abroad have direct access to Americans via the
Internet, and overseas events have fueled violent extremist radicalization and recruitment in the United States. The converse
is also true: events occurring in the United States have empowered the propaganda of violent extremists operating overseas.
While making certain that they stay within their respective authorities, departments and agencies must ensure coordination
between our domestic and international CVE efforts. Given its mandate to support both domestic and international planning,
NCTC will help facilitate this part of the CVE effort so that our Homeland and overseas activities are appropriately
synchronized, consistent with all applicable laws and regulations. While individual departments and agencies will regularly
engage foreign partners, all international engagement will continue to be coordinated through State. 4. Addressing Technology
and Virtual Space The Internet, social networking, and other technology tools and innovations present both challenges and
opportunities. The Internet has facilitated violent extremist recruitment and radicalization and, in some instances, attack
planning, requiring that we consider programs and initiatives that are mindful of the online nature of the threat. At the same
time, the Federal Government can leverage and support the use of new technologies to engage communities, build and
mobilize networks against violent extremism, and undercut terrorist narratives. All of our activities should consider how
technology impacts radicalization to violence and the ways we can use it to expand and improve our whole-of-government
effort. As noted in sub-objective 3.3, we will develop a separate strategy focused on CVE online. Roles and Responsibilities The
SIP assigns Leads and Partners in each of the Future Activities and Efforts listed under respective sub-objectives. Leads and
Partners have primary responsibility for coordinating, integrating, and synchronizing activities to achieve SIP sub-objectives
and the overall goal of the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners. Expectation of Leads and Partners are as follows:
Lead: A department or agency responsible for convening pertinent partners to identify, address, and report on steps that are
being taken, or should be taken, to ensure activities are effectively executed. The Lead is accountable for, among other things: •
Fostering communication among Partners to ensure all parties understand how to complete the activity; • Identifying, in
collaboration with assigned Partners, the actions and resources needed to effectively execute the activity; • Identifying issues
that impede progress; and • Informing all departments and agencies about the status of progress by the Lead and other subobjective Partners, including impediments, modifications, or alterations to the plan for implementation. Partner: A department
or agency responsible for collaborating with a Lead and other Partners to accomplish an activity. Partner(s) are accountable
for: • Accomplishing actions under their department or agency’s purview in a manner that contributes to the effective
execution of an activity; • Providing status reports and assessments of progress on actions pertinent to the activity; and •
Identifying resource needs that impede progress on their department or agency’s activities. Assessing Progress It is important
to recognize that the National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners represents the first time the United States Government
has outlined an approach to address ideologically inspired violent extremism in the Homeland. While the objectives and subobjectives listed in the SIP represent the collective wisdom and insight of the United States Government about what areas of
action have the greatest potential to prevent violent extremism, we will learn more about our effectiveness as we assess our
efforts over time, and we will adjust our activities accordingly. Given the short history of our coordinated, whole-ofgovernment approach to CVE, we will first develop key benchmarks to guide our initial assessment. Where possible, we will
also work to develop indicators of impact to supplement these performance measures, which will tell us whether our activities
are having the intended effects with respect to an objective or sub-objective. As we implement our activities, future
evaluations will shift away from benchmark performance measures towards impact assessments. Departments and agencies
will be responsible for assessing their specific activities in pursuit of SIP objectives, in coordination with an Assessment
Working Group. We will develop a process for identifying gaps, areas of limited progress, resource needs, and any additional
factors resulting from new information on the dynamics of radicalization to violence. Our progress
will be evaluated
and reported annually to the President. Objectives, Sub-Objectives, and Activities The SIP’s objectives mirror the
National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners’ areas of priority action: (1) enhancing Federal engagement with and
support to local communities that may be targeted by violent extremists; (2) building government and law enforcement
expertise for preventing violent extremism; and (3) countering violent extremist propaganda while promoting our
ideals. Each of these is supported by sub-objectives, which constitute measurable lines of effort with which our specific
programs and initiatives are aligned. A key purpose of the SIP is to describe the range of actions we are taking to improve or
expand these efforts. 1. Enhancing Federal Engagement with and Support to Local Communities that May be Targeted by
Violent Extremists Communication and meaningful engagement with the American public is an essential part of the Federal
Government’s work, and it is critical for developing local partnerships to counter violent extremism. Just as we engage and
raise awareness to prevent gang violence, sexual offenses, school shootings, and other acts of violence, so too must we ensure
that our communities are empowered to recognize threats of violent extremism and understand the range of government and
nongovernment resources that can help keep their families, friends, and neighbors safe. As noted in the National Strategy for
Empowering Local Partners: Engagement is essential for supporting community-based efforts to prevent violent extremism
because it allows government and communities to share information, concerns, and potential solutions. Our aims in engaging
with communities to discuss violent extremism are to: (1) share sound, meaningful, and timely information about the threat of
violent extremism with a wide range of community groups and organizations, particularly those involved in public safety
issues; (2) respond to community concerns about government policies and actions; and (3) better understand how we can
effectively support community-based solutions. At the same time, we must ensure that our efforts to prevent violent
extremism do not narrow our relationships with communities to any single issue, including national security. This
necessitates continuing to engage on the full range of community interests and concerns, but it also requires, where feasible,
that we incorporate communities that are being targeted by violent extremists into broader forums with other communities
when addressing non-CVE issues. While we will engage with some communities specifically on CVE issues because of
particular needs, care should be taken to avoid giving the false impression that engagement on non-security issues is taking
place exclusively because of CVE concerns. To ensure transparency, our engagement with communities that are being
targeted by violent extremists will follow two tracks: • We will specifically engage these communities on the threat of violent
extremism to raise awareness, build partnerships, and promote empowerment. This requires specific conversations and
activities related to security issues. • Where we engage on other topics, we will work to include them in broader forums with
other communities when appropriate. Improve the depth, breadth, and frequency of Federal Government engagement with
and among communities on the wide range of issues they care about, including concerns about civil rights, counterterrorism
security measures, international events, and foreign policy issues. Violent extremist narratives espouse a rigid division
between “us” and “them” that argues for exclusion from the broader society and a hostile relationship with government and
other communities. Activities that reinforce our shared sense of belonging and productive interactions between government
and the people undercut this narrative and emphasize through our actions that we are all part of the social fabric of America.
As President Obama emphasized, when discussing Muslim Americans in the context of alQa’ida’s attempts to divide us, “we don’t differentiate between them and us. It’s just us.”
Current Activities and Efforts Departments and agencies have been conducting engagement activities based on their unique
mandates. To better synchronize this work, U.S. Attorneys, who historically have engaged with communities in their districts,
have begun leading Federal engagement efforts. This includes our efforts to engage with communities to (1) discuss issues
such as civil rights, counterterrorism security measures, international events, foreign policy, and other community concerns;
(2) raise awareness about the threat of violent extremism; and (3) facilitate partnerships to prevent radicalization to violence.
The types of communities involved in engagement differ depending on the locations. United States Attorneys, in consultation
with local and Federal partners, are best positioned to make local determinations about which communities they should
engage. Appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, U.S. Attorneys are the senior law enforcement and executive
branch officials in their districts, and are therefore well-placed to help shape and drive community engagement in the field. In
December 2010, 32 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices began expanding their engagement with communities to raise awareness about how
the United States Government can protect all Americans from discrimination, hate crimes, and other threats; to listen to
concerns; and to seek input about government policies and programs. In some instances, these efforts also included initiatives
to educate the public about the threat of violent extremist recruitment, which is one of many components of a broader
community outreach program. • During this initial pilot, these U.S. Attorneys significantly expanded outreach and engagement
on a range of issues of interest to communities; built new relationships where needed; and communicated the United States
Government’s approach to CVE. • Departments and agencies, including State, the Treasury, EDU, HHS, and DHS provided
information, speakers, and other resources for U.S. Attorneys’ community engagement activities, frequently partnering with
DOJ on specific programs and events. A National Task Force, led by DOJ and DHS, was established in November 2010 to help
coordinate community engagement at the national level. It includes all departments and agencies involved in relevant
community engagement efforts and focuses on compiling local, national, and international best practices and disseminating
these out to the field, especially to U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. The Task Force is also responsible for connecting field-based Federal
components to the full range of United States Government officials involved in community engagement to maximize
partnerships, , and resource-sharing. The following are some examples of engagement efforts that are, or will be, coordinated
with the Task Force: • The DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) this year doubled its outreach to communities
and expanded its quarterly engagement roundtables to 14 cities throughout the country. During Fiscal Year 2011, CRCL also
conducted 72 community engagement events, some of which included CVE-related topics. • State engaged on U.S. foreign
policy with a range of interested domestic communities. The Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs alone conducted 80 outreach
events over the past year. • DOJ has produced a number of brochures and other materials on civil rights protections and steps
individuals can take to prevent or respond to discrimination, and has disseminated these to various communities, including
those being targeted by violent extremists. DOJ has translated these materials into a number of languages, including Arabic,
Somali, Urdu, Farsi, and Hindi. • DOJ, in coordination with
DHS, expanded the Building Communities of Trust
which focuses on developing relationships among local law enforcement
departments, fusion centers, and the communities they serve to educate communities on: (1) the Nationwide
(BCOT) Initiative,
Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI); (2) how civil rights and liberties are protected; and (3) how to report incidents
in order to help keep our communities safe. DOJ continues to support the BCOT Initiative
Terrorism Links
WoT DA Links
**Fusion centers key to data integration for threat – federal funding key to
resolve
Phillips 12 [Leslie, senior intelligence advisor for the U.S. Senate Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs Committee, “Fusion Centers Add Value to the Federal
Government Counterterrorism Efforts”, U.S. Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee, 10/3/12,
http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/media/fusion-centers-add-value-to-federalgovernment-counterterrorism-efforts] AK
WASHINGTON – Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., Wednesday
reacted critically to a subcommittee report on fusion centers. “I strongly disagree with the report’s core assertion that ‘fusion
centers have been unable to meaningfully contribute to federal counterterrorism efforts,’” Lieberman said. “This statement is
not supported by the examples presented in the report and is contrary
to the public record, which shows
fusion centers have played a significant role in many recent terrorism cases
and have helped generate hundreds of tips and leads that have led to current
FBI investigations. “The report does include valuable findings in some areas. It cites examples of inappropriate use
of homeland security grant funds and accurately notes that FEMA has struggled to account for how homeland security grant
funds are allocated and used, a longstanding concern of mine. “But the report also contradicts public statements by the
Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the FBI, who have acknowledged the value fusion centers provide to the
intelligence community. “Fusion
centers have stepped up to meet an urgent need in the
last decade,” Lieberman said. “ Without fusion centers, we would not be able
to connect the dots . Fusion centers have been essential to breaking down the
information silos and communications barriers that kept the government
from detecting the most horrific terrorist attack on this country - even though
federal, state, and local officials each held valuable pieces of the puzzle.”
Lieberman noted a number of shortcomings in the report that skew its conclusions. Among them, the report: Makes broad
assertions about the value of fusion centers but only examines one narrow aspect of fusion center operations, the formal
intelligence reporting process. Does not examine support provided by the Department of Homeland Security in the form of
training and access to classified networks. Does not look at finished intelligence products produced by fusion center
personnel, or at the liaison officer programs that many centers have established to build ties with local agencies in their state
or region. Does not look at the important and positive role that the FBI plays in supporting fusion centers through the
deployment of intelligence analysts. Ignores the
importance of the flow of information from
federal agencies to the state and local level through fusion centers, which has
significantly strengthened the ability of frontline law enforcement officers to
detect and prevent potential plots and made our nation safer. Fails to acknowledge
progress that has been made by the vast majority of the fusion centers in the last few years. Some fusion centers
are still underdeveloped, but the vast majority effectively partner with federal
agencies in preventing terrorism and addressing other important national
security and public safety missions. The September 11, 2001, terror attacks demonstrated the urgent
need for the federal government to improve its information sharing and coordination with state and local governments
including law enforcement. Examples of recent terrorism cases where fusion centers have played a critical role include:
“Raleigh Jihad” case. This case from 2009 involved Daniel Patrick Boyd and six others who planned to attack Marine Base
Quantico. The North Carolina fusion center partnered with the local FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force on this investigation.
Rezwan Ferdaus. Ferdaus is a homegrown violent Islamist extremist was arrested in 2010 in Boston, and planned to attack the
Pentagon and the Capitol with remote control small planes attached to explosives. The Massachusetts state fusion center was
credited with making a “significant contribution” to the investigation. Seattle military recruiting center plot. In 2011, two
homegrown violent Islamist extremists were arrested in Seattle for planning to attack a military recruiting center. The initial
lead in this case came from a Seattle Police Department informant, and the investigation was jointly coordinated by the FBI
and state and local agencies at the Washington State Fusion Center.
Fusion centers key to prevent terrorism – minimizes interagency gaps and
coordinate responses
Johnson, 8 [Colonel Bart, Assistant Federal Security Director at DHS, Shelagh Dorn,
program research specialist at New York State Police, “Fusion Centers: New York
State Intelligence Strategy Unifies Law Enforcement”, Police Chief Magazine,
February 2008,
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?article_id=1419&fuseact
ion=display&issue_id=22008] AK
The IACP has recognized these challenges facing law enforcement and has convened several
subcommittees to study and propose solutions to the problems involved with
implementing the exchange of criminal intelligence. This exchange relies on regional
networking and information sharing, ideally through intelligence fusion
centers. Fusion centers combine multiple agencies in one location, pooling
resources and personnel in order to share information and develop intelligence about criminal activities.
Information collected by agencies is collated and analyzed, producing actionable intelligence for dissemination to other law
enforcement agencies. An integral part of the fusion center concept is developing and disseminating intelligence, rather than
simply collecting and storing information or serving as a case support center. Collaboration
encourages a
coordinated and organized response to terrorist and other criminal activity
throughout the target jurisdiction, diminishing gaps in interagency
communication and intelligence. Specific guidance has been developed and published to assist agencies
with information sharing and with establishing fusion centers. Published documents include the following: The National
Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP) is a blueprint for law enforcement administrators building their intelligence
capabilities.1 Law enforcement officials from local, state, tribal, and federal agencies constructed recommendations. The
National Strategy for Information Sharing, published in October 2007, focuses on
reviewing and improving the sharing of homeland security and law enforcement
information related to terrorism with federal, state, local, and tribal entities; the private sector; and foreign partners as well as
protecting information privacy and rights.2 This report outlines the current information sharing environment and the crossagency challenges of collecting, processing, and analyzing all-crimes information to develop and share intelligence while
simultaneously safeguarding civil rights. Fusion Center Guidelines: Developing and Sharing Information and Intelligence in a
New Era contains guidelines to assist in the successful development of fusion centers.3 Fusion
centers embody
collaboration. They benefit the law enforcement community by providing agencies with
resources, including organized intelligence support. Fusion centers are essential for engaging
in crime and intelligence analyses and can assist law enforcement with intelligence-led
policing. Focusing attention on systematically and routinely gathering and sharing information statewide about criminal
activities reduces crime and produces safer communities. In addition, fusion centers assist jurisdictions
by structuring the “big picture,” providing real benefits to global information
sharing in an environment where it can be difficult even to share information
locally. In addition to other critical functions, fusion centers provide a conduit for integrating, analyzing, and
disseminating intelligence. State fusion centers across the United States maximize local
knowledge of potential terrorist suspects, vulnerabilities, and trends, and
communicate that information to the appropriate federal partners . The intelligence
component of fusion centers is the foundation for successful data integration and exchange. Fusion centers produce results.
One long-term example of a successful intelligence repository and analysis center is the New York/New Jersey High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Center, which serves as an information hub for law enforcement agencies in the New York City/New Jersey
area. Tips about drug and criminal activity in the New York City region are tracked and analyzed by investigators and analysts.
The pooling of intelligence data in a central location has proven to be a key factor in identifying those individuals and
organizations that may be furthering, facilitating, or carrying out criminal and terrorist activity in New York City. In particular,
members of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force are assigned on a full-time basis to
coordinate state and federal terrorism prevention efforts. The success of this effort is evident through the coordination and
outreach efforts among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in New York City.
Fusion centers are key to prevent terrorism—they overcome interagency
information gaps and coordinate responses
Johnson and Dorn 8 [Colonel Bart Johnson, Assistant Federal Security Director at
DHS, Shelagh Dorn, program research specialist at New York State Police, “Fusion
Centers: New York State Intelligence Strategy Unifies Law Enforcement”, Police
Chief Magazine, February 2008,
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?article_id=1419&fuseact
ion=display&issue_id=22008] MG
As a result of the tragic terrorist attacks in New York City, in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, l aw
enforcement agencies throughout the country realized there was an
immediate need to refocus many of their investigative and intelligence efforts
on terrorism. The New York State law enforcement community, consisting of more than 540 agencies and staffed by
over 75,000 dedicated law enforcement professionals, was well positioned to gather information, act on the intelligence
Traditionally, political and jurisdictional
divisions among local, state, and federal agencies affected law enforcement
investigations. Agencies ran independent but concurrent investigations
without any mechanism or procedures in place to share the information they
developed. This unfortunately resulted in the compartmentalization of
potentially useful information. In addition, technology gaps between agencies
contributed to the inability to share information, preventing the production of
viable, actionable intelligence. Following the terrorist events of 9/11, it became evident that such lack
of communication—along with a failure to build a centralized and unified intelligence repository to gather,
maintain, and analyze intelligence information limited the ability of U.S. law enforcement
provided to it, and respond to acts of terrorism.
communities to share intelligence. Across the United States, detecting and preventing terrorism has become a law
enforcement priority. Pursuing
terrorists and gathering intelligence data to thwart
further terrorist attacks requires that agencies allocate scarce resources. By
working alone and relying on individual budgets, agencies limit their ability to
detect and prevent terrorism successfully. In addition, few municipal law enforcement agencies can afford to dedicate units to
study and track terrorist and other organized criminal activities. Along with financial concerns, “routine” law enforcement
caseloads normally take precedence for many municipal agencies. Yet the importance of intelligence and the exchange of
information among agencies cannot be dismissed.
Proactive intelligence efforts are the key to
inhibiting criminal networks—whether those networks are related to
terrorism, drugs, or other organized criminal enterprises. For this reason, any informationsharing solution must employ an all-crimes approach. The Solution The IACP has recognized these challenges facing law
enforcement and has convened several subcommittees to study and propose solutions to the problems involved with
implementing the exchange of criminal intelligence. This exchange relies on regional networking and information sharing,
ideally through intelligence fusion centers. Fusion
centers combine multiple agencies in one
location, pooling resources and personnel in order to share information and
develop intelligence about criminal activities. Information collected by
agencies is collated and analyzed, producing actionable intelligence for
dissemination to other law enforcement agencies. An integral part of the fusion
center concept is developing and disseminating intelligence, rather than
simply collecting and storing information or serving as a case support center.
Collaboration encourages a coordinated and organized response to terrorist
and other criminal activity throughout the target jurisdiction, diminishing
gaps in interagency communication and intelligence. Specific guidance has been developed
and published to assist agencies with information sharing and with establishing fusion centers. Published documents include
the following: The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan (NCISP) is a blueprint for law enforcement administrators
building their intelligence capabilities.1 Law enforcement officials from local, state, tribal, and federal agencies constructed
recommendations. The National Strategy for Information Sharing, published in October 2007, focuses on reviewing and
improving the sharing of homeland security and law enforcement information related to terrorism with federal, state, local,
and tribal entities; the private sector; and foreign partners as well as protecting information privacy and rights.2 This report
outlines the current information sharing environment and the cross-agency challenges of collecting, processing, and analyzing
all-crimes information to develop and share intelligence while simultaneously safeguarding civil rights. Fusion Center
Guidelines: Developing and Sharing Information and Intelligence in a New Era contains guidelines to assist in the successful
development of fusion centers.3 Fusion centers embody collaboration. They benefit the law enforcement community by
providing agencies with resources, including organized intelligence support. Fusion
centers are essential
for engaging in crime and intelligence analyses and can assist law
enforcement with intelligence-led policing. Focusing attention on
systematically and routinely gathering and sharing information statewide
about criminal activities reduces crime and produces safer communities. In
addition, fusion centers assist jurisdictions by structuring the “big picture,” providing real benefits to global information
sharing in an environment where it can be difficult even to share information locally. In addition to other critical functions,
fusion centers provide a conduit for integrating, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence. State fusion centers across the
United States maximize local knowledge of potential terrorist suspects, vulnerabilities, and trends, and communicate that
information to the appropriate federal partners. The intelligence component of fusion centers is the foundation for successful
data integration and exchange. Fusion centers produce results. One long-term example of a successful intelligence repository
and analysis center is the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Center, which serves as an information hub
for law enforcement agencies in the New York City/New Jersey area. Tips
about drug and criminal
activity in the New York City region are tracked and analyzed by investigators
and analysts. The pooling of intelligence data in a central location has proven to be a key factor in identifying those
individuals and organizations that may be furthering, facilitating, or carrying out criminal and terrorist activity in New York
City. In particular, members of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force are assigned on a fulltime basis to coordinate state and federal terrorism prevention efforts. The
success of this effort is
evident through the coordination and outreach efforts among federal, state,
and local law enforcement agencies in New York City.
Fusion centers effectively utilize classified information—centers are a critical
part of the information infrastructure
Eaneff, 07[Charles, former Acting Executive Director DHS Office of State and Local
Law Enforcement and a Naval Postgraduate School alumnus, “THE IMPACT OF
CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND FUSION ON PERCEIVED VALUE AND QUALITY OF
UNCLASSIFIED TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE”, March 2007
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a467124.pdf]//AK
Allied non-state actors in the private sector control approximately 85% of the
nation’s critical infrastructure in the over 87,000 different U.S. jurisdictions.16 For every
federal law enforcement officer, there are approximately five public sector health professionals, seven state/local law
enforcement officers, ten firefighters and twenty-one private security professionals, along with countless other public works,
emergency management and emergency medical professionals. As of June 2000, there were approximately 708,022 state and
local law enforcement officers in the United States.20 As of June 2002, there were only 93,000 Federal law enforcement
officers, or less than 12% of sworn law enforcement.21 The
FBI, lead investigative agency for domestic
terrorism, had only 12,416 agents as of October 2005, or approximately 1.5% of
total law enforcement. In order to maximize our defense against asymmetric
threats, we must effectively utilize unclassified intelligence to educate these
diverse professionals on threats, engage them in the intelligence process, and
enlist them to provide information to federal partners so that appropriate
preventative measures can be considered. We must improve our performance to meet this need.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, remarked on December 1,
2005, “we
must fight an intelligent war against terrorism using every tool
available...This is the government’s obligation, and it is the American people’s expectation... it is your
expectation.”22 If we are to use “every tool available,” and “fight an intelligent war…” then we must educate and
utilize the 98.5% of law enforcement that are not FBI agents along with other NTR
professionals in the asymmetric conflict threat posed by hostile non-state actors. If
found to be effective, CBF for NTR would represent a concrete, visible step in transformation from a need-to-know to a needtoshare culture. Classified
intelligence needs of local law enforcement are being addressed
through Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) and the development of state and local fusion centers, some
of which include fire service and private sector partners. Classified and unclassified information can be
shared with participants who have received security clearances. One of the limitations of these
centers is the need for those directly involved with the centers to live in the geographic region of the centers; in a state such as
California that covers a vast geographic area, this can be a significant limitation, even with multiple fusion centers within the
state. It is clear that
technological assistance will be required to reach a critical mass of
professionals over a wide area in a timely manner. As noted in the Markle report, “Protecting
America’s Freedom in the Information Age,” The DHS should become the base for building up a
national community of intelligence contributors and analysts. To create a national
infrastructure that is aware, robust, and resilient to the many challenges we face in
the 21st century, we have to harness the power and dynamism of information 22
Alberto R. Gonzales, Prepared Remarks for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales technology by utilizing the strengths and
mitigating the weaknesses of our networked society.23 (Emphasis Added) CBF intelligence must utilize information
technology with an ability to reach over 87,000 jurisdictions, while also maintaining integration with other Federal, State and
Regional efforts. The implications to homeland security are significant. The adage, “Quantity has a
quality all its own” reflects the potential impact of the improved use and involvement of NTR in the intelligence process.
Small expenditures in improving unclassified intelligence are leveraged by the
millions of diverse NTR along with the billions of dollars expended to date in
community outreach programs such as community oriented policing (COP). An estimated 7.5 billion dollars
was expended for COP alone from 1994-2000.24 Significant efforts have been focused on intelligence analysis and upward
intelligence flow; stimulating NTR involvement in intelligence operations through improved dissemination can exponentially
increase the quantity and quality of that upward intelligence flow. Focusing
readily available technology,
existing infrastructure, and intelligence smart practices on NTR will result in
improved information flow, supporting analytical success and initiating an upward
spiral of intelligence quality and effective counter-terrorism operations.
Fusion centers key to detecting terrorists – contextualization necessary
Eaneff, ‘7[Charles, former Acting Executive Director DHS Office of State and Local Law Enforcement and a Naval
Postgraduate School alumnus, “THE IMPACT OF CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND FUSION ON PERCEIVED VALUE AND QUALITY
OF UNCLASSIFIED TERRORISM INTELLIGENCE”, March 2007 http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a467124.pdf]/AK
Policy demands that more information be shared; for that information to be effectively utilized, decision makers must perceive
both value and quality in that information. This research does not fully address defining the needs of non-traditional
intelligence recipients, another critical opportunity for research, but narrowly focuses on the impact of CBF of open source
information sources onto unclassified intelligence through hyperlink technology. The
need for contextual
background is evident at every level of decision making; in confirmation hearings, National
Director of Intelligence nominee General Hayden reflected on lack of context in decision making in response to questioning by
Senator Feinstein: “One key one that I wanted to mention when the chairman was talking about it, the Iraq WMD estimate was
essentially worked in a WMD channel. It was absent a regional or cultural context. We are not doing that now…We're not doing
that on Iran.”12 (Emphasis added) Understandably,
in the midst of terrorist attack, when
contextual background is most needed by decision makers, those with
personal knowledge of relevant context and background are least available to
the homeland security professionals in the approximately 18,000 law enforcement jurisdictions who
may seek the information, let alone other homeland security disciplines; professionals who will use whatever context and
background is available to them for their decision making. As
it was on 9/11, police chiefs, fire chiefs,
private security, emergency medical services and public health leadership should not expect return
phone calls from any federal or state agency that might be able to provide
contextual background, as these agencies will be inundated by requests and
operational support requirements. When information is most needed ,
individuals with the contextual background will be least available , busy
instead supporting their home agencies in crisis management. Homeland
Security professionals looking for contextual background are left to their own
resources to obtain the information they need, potentially from questionable
Internet sources. In one effort to emphasize the importance of context, the U.S.
Government Printing Office/CQ Congressional Reporting Service citations
include the phrase “Providing government documents on demand, in context”
explicitly acknowledging the critical relationship between information
sharing and context. Intelligence producers must also provide intelligence “on
demand, in context,” unequivocally affirming the relationship between effective information sharing and context.
Providing unclassified intelligence “on demand, in context” is critical for millions of employees in NTR disciplines who
incorporate that context into day to day decision making in public contacts, policy development, strategy and tactics. In the
absence of CBF by intelligence producers, open Internet searches of unvetted sites by intelligence recipients can prove not
only unreliable, but entirely inaccurate. For instance, a Google search that might be completed by a homeland security
professional searching for contextual background on aircraft use in Islamic terrorist attacks, “Islamic terrorists kamikazes
weapon aircraft” leads to a “Non Aligned Press Network” story where it is reported that the planes on 9/11were flown
utilizing remote controls by individuals in American government. False Internet postings such as this are common enough that
the U.S. State Department attempts to identify such misinformation on USINFO.STATE.GOV.13 This webpage highlights the
danger of utilizing unvetted, open searches for contextual background; If the intelligence producer fails to provide CBF with
their product, NTR may find very authentic looking information on the Internet that, when combined with timely, accurate and
actionable intelligence, produces poor decisions. The
context and background utilized by
decision makers must be reliable, vetted information that is perceived as high quality and valuable, and
it must be consistent with information being utilized by the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the
military, and other state, local and federal homeland security professionals.
Through CBF, the IC can ensure that contextual background used NTR is reliable, vetted, and consistent with the hermeneutic
of the producing agency. The IC must know if incorporating a CBF system with intelligence products provided to NTR will also
improve the perceived value and quality of that intelligence.
Fusion centers key to prevent terrorism – intergovernmental and NGO
info-sharing key
DHS 15 [Department of Homeland Security, “State and Major Urban Area Fusion
Centers”, DHS.gov, 7/6/15, http://www.dhs.gov/state-and-major-urban-areafusion-centers] MG
State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) serve as focal points within the state and local
environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information
between the federal government and state, local, tribal, territorial (SLTT) and private sector
partners. Located in states and major urban areas throughout the country, fusion centers are uniquely
situated to empower front-line law enforcement, public safety, fire service,
emergency response, public health, critical infrastructure protection, and private sector security personnel to
understand local implications of national intelligence, thus enabling local officials to better protect
their communities. Fusion centers provide interdisciplinary expertise and
situational awareness to inform decision-making at all levels of government.
They conduct analysis and facilitate information sharing while assisting law enforcement
and homeland security partners in preventing, protecting against, and responding to crime and terrorism. Fusion centers are
owned and operated by state and local entities with support from federal partners in the form of deployed personnel, training,
technical assistance, exercise support, security clearances, connectivity to federal systems, technology, and grant funding. The
Current Threat Environment and Role of Fusion Centers in National Security Both at home and abroad, the United States faces
an adaptive enemy in an asymmetric threat environment. Events since May 2009 have demonstrated that the threat to the
homeland is not abating. The National Network of Fusion Centers (National Network) is uniquely situated to empower frontline law enforcement, public safety, emergency response, and private sector security personnel to lawfully gather and share
information to identify emerging threats. The national security enterprise must reach beyond the capabilities of the federal
government and national Intelligence Community to identify and warn about impending plots that could impact the homeland,
particularly when the individuals responsible for the threats operate within the United States and do not travel or
communicate with others overseas. By building trusted relationships and collaborating with SLTT and private sector partners,
fusion centers can gather and share the information necessary to pursue and
disrupt activities that may be indicators of, or potential precursors to, terrorist
activity. With timely, accurate information on potential terrorist threats, fusion centers can directly contribute to and
inform investigations initiated and conducted by federal entities, such as the Joint Terrorism Task Forces led by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. According to the 2010 National Security Strategy (PDF, 60 pages - 1.52 MB),
the federal
government must continue to integrate and leverage fusion centers to enlist
all of our intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security capabilities to
prevent acts of terrorism on American soil. Efforts to protect the homeland
require the timely gathering, analysis, and sharing of threat-related
information. Fusion centers provide a mechanism through which the federal government, SLTT, and private sector
partners come together to accomplish this purpose. Beginning in 2003, the federal government, in cooperation with state and
local entities, published guidance to enable fusion centers to operate at a baseline level of capability and to form a robust and
fully integrated National Network. The National Network allows the federal government, SLTT, and private sector partners to
participate as full contributors to, and beneficiaries of, the homeland security enterprise. This
strategic vision
can be realized only when fusion centers demonstrate institutionalized levels
of capability that enable efficient and effective information sharing and
analysis across the National Network. This will help link the federal government with SLTT and private
sector entities to more effectively share information. Given the evolving threat environment, it is vital that fusion centers
quickly achieve their roles, as explained in the National Strategy for Information Sharing (NSIS), as the focal points within the
SLTT environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat‐related information. Enhancing Department
Resources to Support Fusion Centers The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expedited the deployment of resources
to fusion centers to enhance their ability to perform their mission. The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), the
Department's lead for support to fusion centers, has deployed over 90 personnel, including Intelligence Officers and Regional
Directors, to the field. I&A also worked aggressively to deploy Homeland Secure Data Network (HSDN) to over 60 fusion
centers. HSDN provides SECRET-level connectivity to enhance the ability of state and local partners to receive federally
generated classified threat information. Additionally, the Department significantly expanded training and technical assistance
opportunities for fusion center personnel. Through its long-standing partnership with the Department of Justice (DOJ), the
Department has conducted more than 300 training and technical assistance deliveries, workshops, and exchanges on topics
including risk analysis, security, and privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties since 2007. By providing these resources, the
Department supports fusion centers to address some of the nation's most significant homeland security challenges. Expanding
the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI) A Call to Action: A Unified Message Regarding the Need to
Support Suspicious Activity Reporting and Training To provide guidance regarding how and where to report suspicious
activities, state, local, and federal agencies worked collaboratively to develop a Unified Message that provides clear guidance
regarding how to report suspicious activities, encourages agencies to work with DHS to utilize the "If You See Something, Say
Something™" campaign, and emphasizes the importance of training frontline personnel. The Department is working closely
with the DOJ-led Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative Program Management Office to establish a standard
process to identify and report suspicious activity in jurisdictions across the country. Under the leadership of I&A, the
Department has made it a priority to participate in and support the implementation of the NSI while also integrating SAR
processes across the National Network of Fusion Centers. The integration of NSI within both the Department and the fusion
centers is a key element of fusion center outreach to law enforcement at all levels of government. The Department has also
launched the "If You See Something, Say Something™" campaign in order to engage the public to identify and report indicators
of terrorism, crime, and other threats. The Path Ahead Working closely with interagency partners and Fusion Center Directors,
the Department supports an annual nationwide, in-depth assessment of fusion centers to evaluate their capabilities and to
establish strategic priorities for federal government support. The assessment focuses primarily on four Critical Operational
Capabilities (Receive, Analyze, Disseminate, and Gather) and four Enabling Capabilities (Privacy/Civil Rights and Civil
Liberties Protections, Sustainment Strategy, Communications and Outreach, and Security) as well as additional priority areas
for the year. Leveraging data collected from the Annual Fusion Center Assessment, the Department coordinates efforts to build
fusion center capabilities and mitigate identified gaps. These
gap mitigation efforts are designed to
assist fusion centers in becoming centers of analytic excellence that serve as
focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis,
gathering, and sharing of threat-related information.
Kritiks
Kappeler
1nc
Viewing violence as a system, ignores the individual motives of those who
caused the violence, and exonerates them, blaming circumstance instead.
Kappeler 95 – Former lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia and an
Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn
University. (Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal
Behavior, 1995 , pg 1-4)
Violence is a ubiquitous reality in our society.
Violence is also a topic of public debate, although context and manner of discussion vary — from racist violence, sexual violence, the
violence of youth and youth culture, the increase of violence in society, to the violence of war and the question whether it could be
stopped by the use of greater violence. Violence
is categorized into acts of violence, to be listed and
prosecuted by the law. Violence is named after its victims: violence against women, sexual abuse of children, exploita- tion
of animals, attacks on old people, hatred of foreigners, anti- Semitism — except where the violence is attributed to such marginal
groups of society that any association with those naming it seems out of the question: the violence of today's youth, right extremism
and neo-Nazi violence, hooliganism, or racist attacks where this means attacks by 'racist groups'.
What
is striking is
that the violence which is talked about is always the violence committed by someone
else: women talk about the violence of men, adults about the violence of young people;
the left, liberals and the centre about the violence of right extremists; the right, centre and
liberals about the violence of leftist extremists; political activists talk about structural
violence, police and politicians about violence in the 'street', and all together about the violence in our society. Similarly,
Westerners talk about violence in the Balkans, Western citizens together with their generals about the violence of the Serbian army.
Violence is recognized and measured by its visible effects, the spectacular blood of
wounded bodies, the material destruction of objects, the visible damage left in the
world of'objects'. In its measur- able damage we see the proof that violence has taken place, the violence being
reduced to this damage. The violation as such, or invisible forms of violence — the non-physical violence of threat and
terror, of insult and humiliation, the violation of human dignity — are hardly ever the issue except to some extent in feminist and antiracist analyses, or under the name of psychological violence. Here
violence is recognized by the victims and
defined from their perspective —an important step away from the catalogue of violent
acts and the exclus- ive evidence of material traces in the object. Yet even here the focus
tends to be on the effects and experience of violence, either the objective and scientific measure of
psychological damage, or the increasingly subjective definition of violence as experience. Violence is perceived as a
phenomenon for science to research and for politics to get a grip on. But violence is
not a phenomenon: it is the behaviour of people, human action which may be
analysed. What is missing is an analysis of violence as action —not just as acts of
violence, or the cause of its effccts, but as the actions of people in relation to other
people and beings or things. Feminist critique, as well as Other political critiques, has analysed the preconditions of
violence, the unequal power relations which enable it to take place. However, under the pressure of mainstream
science and a sociological perspective which increasingly dominates our think- ing, it is
becoming standard to argue as if it were these power relations which cause the violence.
Underlying is a behaviourist model which prefers to see human action as the
exclusive product of circumstances, ignoring the personal decision of the agent to
act, implying in turn that circumstances virtually dictate certain forms of
behaviour. Even though we would probably not underwrite these propositions in their crass form, there is
nevertheless a growing tendency, not just in social science, to explain violent
behavjour by its circumstances. (Compare the question, 'Does pornography cause violence?') The circumstances
identified may differ according to the politics of the explainers, but the method of explanation remains the same. While consideration
of mitigating circumstances has its rightful place in a court of law trying (and'defending) an offender, , this does not automatically
make it an adequate or sufficient practice for political analysis. It begs the question, in particular, 'What is considered to be part of the
circumstances (and by whom)?' Thus in the case of sexual offenders, there is a routine search — on the part of the tabloid press or the
professionals of violence —for experiences of violence in the offender's own past, an understanding which is rapidly solidifying in the
scientific model of a 'cycle of violence'. That
is, the relevant factors are sought in the distant past and
in other contexts of action, while a crucial factor in the present context is ignored,
namely the agent's decision to act as he did. Even politically oppositional groups are not immune to this
main- stream sociologizing. Some left groups have tried to explain men's sexual violence as the
result of class oppression, while some Black theoreticians have explained the violence of
Black men as the result of racist oppression. The ostensible aim of these arguments may be to draw attention to
the pervasive and structural violence of classism and racism, yet they not only fail to combat such inequality, they actively contribute
to it. Although such oppression is a very real part of an agent's life context, these 'explanations' ignore the fact that not everyone
experiencing the same oppression uses violence, that is, that
these circumstances do not 'cause' violent
behaviour. They overlook, in other words, that the perpetrator has decided to
violate, even if this decision was made in circumstances of limited choice. To overlook this
decision, however, is itself a political decision, serving particular interests. In the first instance it serves to exonerate the
perpetrators, whose responsibility is thus transferred to circumstan- ces and a
history for which other people (who remain beyond reach) are responsible. Moreover, it
helps to stigmatize all those living in poverty and oppression; because they are obvious
victims of violence and oppression, they are held to be potential perpetrators themselves.1
This slanders all the women who have experienced sexual violence, yet do not use violence against others, and libels those
experiencing racist and class oppression, yet do not necessarily act out violence. Far from
supporting those oppressed by classist, racist or sexist oppression, it sells out these entire groups
in the interest of exonerating individual mem- bers. It is a version of collective victim-blaming, of
stigmatizing entire social strata as potential hotbeds of violence, which rests on and perpetuates the mainstream division of society into
so-called marginal groups — the classic clienteles of social work and care politics (and of police repression) — and an implied 'centre'
to which all the speakers, explainers, researchers and carers themselves belong, and which we are to assume to be a zone of nonviolence. Explaining
people's violent behaviour by their circumstances also has the
advantage of implying that the 'solution' lies in a change of circumstances. Thus it has
become fashionable among socially minded politicians and intellectuals in Germany to argue that the rising neo- Nazi violence of
young people (men), especially in former East Germany, needs to be countered by combating poverty and unem- ployment in these
areas. Likewise anti-racist groups like the Anti- Racist Alliance or the Anti-Nazi League in Britain argue that 'the causes of racism,
like poverty and unemployment, should be tackled' and that it is 'problems like unemployment and bad housing which lead to
racism'.2 Besides being no explanation at all of why (white) poverty and unemployment should lead specifically to racist violence
(and what would explain middle- and upper-class racism), it is more than questionable to combat poverty only (but precisely) when
and where violence is exercised. It not only legitimates the violence (by 'explaining' it), but constitutes an incentive to violence,
confirming that social problems will be taken seriously when and where 'they' attract attention by means of violence - just as the most
unruly children in schools (mostly boys) tend to get more attention from teachers than well-behaved and quiet children (mostly girls).
Thus if German neo-Nazi youths and youth groups, since their murderous assaults on refugees and migrants in Hoyerswerda, Rostock,
Dresden etc., are treated to special youth projects and social care measures (to the tune of DM 20 million per year), including
'educative' trips to Morocco and Israel,3 this is an unmistakable signal to society that racist violence does indeed 'pay off'.
Causes error replication – lack of understanding
Kappeler 95 – Former lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia and an
Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn
University. (Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal
Behavior, 1995 , pg 14)
This readiness to engage in violence which rests on the well- known principle
that holy ends justify unholy means - shows at the very least a lack of
understanding about the relationship between means and ends, theory and practice,
not to say cause and effect. Yet neither the means nor their ends make any sense without
considering the point of departure, that is, an analysis of the real situation whose
change is our aim, and out of which the means have to be developed. More importantly,
however, this readiness to employ violence proves our own will to power: the will to enforce my aims whatever the cost, and
in realizing them to use whatever means are expedient. Although
it must certainly be the aim of any
liberation politics to dismantle the social power structure and thus to decrease the
possib- ilities for systematic violence and abuse, this does not spare us the question
of a politics of behaviour in a world which has not yet been rid of these power
structures. Nor does it suffice simply to wish for a future society in which power may
no longer be exercised. Here lies the crucial difference between a Utopia or vision on the one hand, and a politics of
change whose aims, however Utopian they may seem, are derived from a political analysis and critique of reality on the other.
For a Utopia or 'vision' is the idealist sketch of a future state of society that remains
silent about how this state can be reached (or main- tained). Its focus is on the
happy future, jumping the analysis of the present and the particular problems
which will need to be solved on the way to the future. It means not only to
abandon any responsibility for the present, but to build this nonresponsibility into the future, since personal responsibility is given up in
favour of a superior, even if invisible, institution and authority: the abolished
power structure. For in the future Utopia there will be no abuse of power because there will be no power to abuse,
and no violence because it will be impossible to act violently —because, in other words, not only the traditional offenders but
also we ourselves would simply be prevented from behaving violently. Not
only is it a vision of perfect
unfreedom — of being forced to be 'good', it is also a fallacy to believe that if there
were no social power structures there would no longer be any oppor- tunities for
being violent.
Reject their discursive reality – this is a prerequisite to preventing bad
policymaking
Cheeseman and Bruce, ’96 - Snr. Lecturer @ New South Wales, and best-selling
author. (Graeme Cheeseman and Robert Bruce, Discourses of Danger & Dread
Frontiers, 1996, p. 8)
As Jim George argues in the following chapter, we need to look not so much at contending
policies as they are made for us but at challenging ‘ the discursive process
which gives [favored interpretations of “reality”] their meaning and which direct [Australia’s]
policy/analytical/military responses’. This process is not restricted to the small, official defence and security establishment
huddled around the US-Australian War Memorial in Canberra. It also encompasses much of Australia’s academic defence and
security community located primarily though not exclusively within the Australian National University and the University
College of the University of New South Wales. These discursive processes are examined in detail in subsequent chapters as
authors attempt to make sense of a politics of exclusion and closure which exercises disciplinary power over Australia’s
security community. They also question the discourse of ‘regional security’, ‘security cooperation’. ‘peacekeeping and ‘alliance
politics’ that are central to Australia’s official and academic security agenda in the 1990s. This is seen as an important task
especially when, as is revealed, the disciplines of International Relations and Strategic Studies are under challenge from
critical and theoretical debates ranging across the social sciences and humanities; debates that are nowhere to be found in
public policies on defence
informed, underpinned and legitimised by a narrowly-based
intellectual enterprise which draws strength rom contested concepts of
realism and liberalism, which in turn seek legitimacy through policy-making
processes. Contributors ask whether Australia’s policy-makers and their academic
advisers are unaware of broader intellectual debates, or resistant to them, or choose
not to understand them, and why?
Australian defence and security studies. The chapters graphically illustrate how Australia’s
and security are
To summarise: a
central concern of this book is to democratise the defence and security
theory/practice process in Australia so that restrictions on debate can be understood
and resisted. This is a crucial enterprise in an analytical/policy environment
dominated by particularly rigid variants of realism which have become so
powerful and unreflective that they are no longer recognized simply as
particular ways of constituting the world, but as descriptions of the real—as
reality itself. The consequences of this (silenced) theory-as-practice may be viewed every
day in the poignant, distressing monuments to analytical/policy metooism at the Australian (Imperial) War Memorial in
Canberra and the many other monuments to young Australians in towns and cities around the country. These
are the
flesh and blood instalments of an insurance policy strategy which, tragically, remains integral
to Australian realism, despite claims of a new mature independent identity in the 1990s. This is what, unfortunately, continues
to be at stake in the potentially deadly debates over defence and security revealed in this book. For this reason alone, it should
be regarded as a positive and constructive contribution to debate by those who are the targets of its criticisms.
Links
Viewing violence as a result of circumstance ignores the possibility that people
need to change and resist violence themselves.
Kappeler 95 – Former lecturer in English at the University of East Anglia and an
Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Akhawayn
University. (Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal
Behavior, 1995 , pg 5)
If we nevertheless continue to explain violence by its 'circum- stances' and attempt to
counter it by changing these circumstances, it is also because in this way we stay in
command of the problem. In particular, we do not complicate the problem by any suggestion that it might
be people who need to change. Instead, we turn the perpet- rators of violence into the
victims of circumstances, who as victims by definition cannot act sensibly (but in changed circumstances will
behave differently). 'We', on the other hand, are the subjects able to take in hand the task of changing the circumstances. Even
if changing the circumstances — combating poverty, unemployment,! injustice etc. — may not be easy, it nevertheless remains
within 'our' scope, at least theoretically and by means of state power. Changing
people, on the other hand,
is neither within our power nor, it seems, ultimately in our interest: we prefer to
keep certain people under control, putting limits on their violent behaviour, but we
apparently have no interest in a politics that presupposes people's ability to change
and aims at changing attitudes and behaviour. For changing (as opposed to restricting) other people's
behaviour is beyond the range and in- fluence of our own power; only they themselves can change it. It requires their will to
change, their will not to abuse power and not to use violence. A politics aiming at a change in people's behaviour would
require political work that is very much more cumbersome and very much less promising of success than is the use of state
power and social control. It would require political consciousness-raising — politicizing the way we think - which" cannot be
imposed on others by force or compulsory educational measures. It would require a view of people which takes seriously and
reckons with their will, both their will to violence or their will to change. To take seriously the will of others however would
mean recognizing one's own, and putting people's will, including our own, at the centre of political reflection. A political
analysis of violence needs to recognize this will, the personal decision in favour of violence — not just to describe acts of
violence, or the conditions which enable them to take place, but also to capture the moment of decision which is the real
impetus for violent action. For without this decision there will be no violent act, not even in circumstances which potentially
permit it. It is the decision to violate, not just the act itself, which makes a person a perpetrator of violence — just as it is the
decision not to do so which makes people not act violently and not abuse their power in a situation which would nevertheless
permit it. This
moment of decision, there- fore, is also the locus of potential resistance
to violence. To understand the structures of thinking and the criteria by which such decisions are reached, but above all
to regard this decision as an act of choice, seems to me a necessary precondition for any political struggle against violence and
for a non-violent society. My focus, then, is on the decision to violate - not just in circum- stances where violence is
conspicuous by its damage, but in every situation where the choice to violate presents itself. This means a change from the
accustomed perspective on violence to the context where decisions for actions are being made, as it were 'before' their
consequences become apparent, and which we may not recognize as contexts of violence. Our political analyses of sexual or
racist violence have necessarily concentrated on situations where the power disequilibrium between perpetrator and victim is
extreme, where, in particular, it is supported by social power structures such as male and/or white supremacy, so that not
only is the violence unlikely to receive sanctions, but on the contrary, the perpetrator will find support rather than the victim.
Violence, however, is a possibility wherever there is freedom of action, however limited. Such violence
may 'look'
different, not least because the possibilities for resistance may also be greater in
situations where there is relative freedom of action also on the part of the other
agent, that is, the violator's envisaged victim.
Alt
Focusing on a policy-making as a starting point undermines critical democratic
assessment, necessary for good decisionmaking and undermining facism
Cheeseman and Bruce, ’96 - Snr. Lecturer @ New South Wales, and best-selling
author. (Graeme Cheeseman and Robert Bruce, Discourses of Danger & Dread
Frontiers, 1996, p. 6-7)
The demand tacit or otherwise, that the policy-maker’s frame of reference be
accepted as the only basis for discussion and analysis ignores a three
thousand year old traditional commonly associated with Socrates and
purportedly integral to the Western tradition of democratic dialogue. More
immediately, it ignores post-seventeenth century democratic traditions which
insist that a good society must have within it some way of critically assessing
its knowledge and the decisions based upon that knowledge which impacts
upon citizens of such a society. This is a tradition with a slightly different connotation in contemporary
liberal democracies which, during the Cold War, were proclaimed different and superior to the totalitarian enemy precisely
because there were institu-tional checks and balances upon power.
In short, one
of the major differences between ‘open societies’ and their (closed)
counterparts behind the Iron curtain was that the former encouraged the
critical testing of knowledge and decisions of the powerful and assessing them
against liberal democratic principles. The latter tolerated criticism only on rare
and limited occasions. For some, this represented the triumph of rational-scientific methods of inquiry and
techniques of falsification. For others, especially since positivism and rationalism have lost so much of their allure, it meant
that for society to become open and liberal, sectors of the population must be independent of the state and free to question its
knowledge and power. One must be able to say ‘why’ to power and proclaim ‘no’ to power.
Though we do not expect this position to be accepted by every reader, contributors to this book believe that critical dialogue is
long overdue in Australia and needs to be listened to. For all its liberal democratic trappings, Australia’s security community
continues to invoke closed monological narratives on defence and security.
Affirmative
A2: Federalism
States perceive Fusion Centers as unfunded mandates
Monahan and Palmer 9 [Torin Monahan, director of the international surveillance
studies network, associate editor of the Surveillance and Society academic journal,
professor of communication studies, Neal A. Palmer, graduate student in community
research, “The emerging politics of DHS fusion centers”, Security Dialogue,
December 2009, http://publicsurveillance.com/papers/FC-SD.pdf] MG
Unfunded mandates represent an additional criticism by state and local
governments of fusion centers. Though federal funds have become increasingly available to establish and
improve fusion centers, much of the onus of funding salaries for public- and privatesector analysts and other fusion center personnel rests with state and local
authorities (Ebbert, 2005; Sheridan & Hsu, 2006). States and localities feel the need to cut
budgets in other departments in order to fund fusion centers, even if threats
of terrorism appear minimal, and this may weaken their ability to respond
adequately to other crimes or maintain other socially necessary programs
(Schmitt & Johnston, 2008; Belluck, 2004). If local and state agencies choose not to direct as
much money to fusion centers, the fusion center may not operate at full
strength (Hall, 2007). Ironically, then, inadequate funding at the federal level may mean that fusion centers cannot
establish coordinated counter-terrorism activities throughout the country.
A2: Oversight CP
Oversight fails – DHS will backlash and circumvent
O’Harrow Jr 12 – award winning political journalist for the Washington Post (Robert,
Washington Post, October 2, 2012, “DHS ‘fusion centers’ portrayed as pools of ineptitude
and civil liberties intrusions” http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/dhs-fusioncenters-portrayed-as-pools-of-ineptitude-and-civil-libertiesintrusions/2012/10/02/10014440-0cb1-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html) //DS
The ranking Republican on a Senate panel on Wednesday accused the Department of Homeland Security of hiding
embarrassing information about its so-called "fusion" intelligence sharing centers, charging that the program has wasted
hundreds of millions of dollars while contributing little to the country's counterterrorism efforts. In a 107-page
report released late Tuesday, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said that Homeland Security has
spent up to $1.4 billion funding fusion centers -- in effect, regional intelligence sharing centers--
that have
produced "useless" reports while at the same time collecting information on the innocent activities of American Muslims that
The fusion centers, created under President George W. Bush and expanded
under President Barack Obama, consist of special teams of federal, state and local officials collecting and
may have violated a federal privacy law.
analyzing intelligence on suspicious activities throughout the country. They have been hailed by Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano as “one of the centerpieces” of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts. But Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the
ranking Republican on the panel, charged Wednesday that Homeland Security had tried to bury evidence of problems at the
centers. "Unfortunately,
DHS has resisted oversight of these centers," he said. "The
Department opted not to inform Congress or the public of serious problems plaguing its
fusion centers and broader intelligence efforts. When this subcommittee requested
documents that would help it identify these issues, the department initially resisted turning
them over, arguing that they were protected by privilege, too sensitive to share, were protected by
confidentiality agreements, or did not exist at all. The American people deserve better. I hope this report will help generate the
reforms that will help keep our country safe." A spokesman for Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News Tuesday
that the Senate report was "out of date, inaccurate and misleading." Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Napolitano, said the
Senate panel "refused to review relevant data, including important intelligence information pertinent to their
findings." Another Homeland Security official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the department has
made improvements to the fusion centers and that the skills of officials working in them are “evolving and maturing.” The
American Civil Liberties Union also issued a statement saying the report underscores problems that it and other civil liberty
groups have been flagging for years. "The
ACLU warned back in 2007 that fusion centers posed grave
threats to Americans' privacy and civil liberties, and that they needed clear guidelines and
independent oversight," said Michael German, ACLU senior policy counsel. "This report is a good first step, and we call
upon Congress to hold public hearings to investigate fusion centers and their ongoing abuses.”
Oversight doesn't solve – dysfunctional and fractured
Barry ‘15 - Director of the TransBorder Project at the Center for International Policy and
author of Border Wars and writer for the Boston Globe, (Tom, February 26 2015, Boston
Globe, “Don't Defund, Just Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security,”
http://bostonreview.net/blog/tom-barry-dismantle-department-homeland-securityimmigration) //DS
No other federal department is subject to greater congressional oversight. Some ninety
congressional committees and subcommittees monitor DHS operations. But this extensive
oversight hasn’t produced a more effective and cost-efficient department. To the contrary.
Doing the rounds before these congressional committees, DHS officials shape their statements according to the political
agendas of committee chairmen, thereby further contributing to the mission drift of DHS. Rather than providing
effective oversight, congressional committees—notably the House Homeland Security Committee and its
Border and Maritime Security Subcommittee—function more as boosters and cheerleaders. Eager to display
their hardline positions on border security or immigration enforcement, congressional members keep pushing DHS to ramp
up its border security operations, resulting in a trail of monumental boondoggles such as the virtual border fence, intelligence
fusion centers, deployment of military-grade drones to the border, and a border wall that costs $1–7 billion each mile
(depending on the terrain) to construct. Without effective congressional oversight
and with constant
congressional pressure to expand DHS operations, the department relies heavily on private
contractors—many of whom also generously contribute to the election campaigns of
committee members—for the management and implementation of core DHS functions, such
as cybersecurity. Over the past dozen years, governmental research and monitoring
agencies have published an ever-expanding library of reports that the agency’s waste and
failure. Hundreds of reports by the Congressional Research Service, GAO, and the DHS Office of Inspector General
have painted a picture of an agency badly divided and highly dysfunctional.
A2: Kappeler
Structural violence is the proximate cause of all war- creates priming that
psychologically structures escalation.
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois ‘4 – Professor of Anthropology at Berkley,
Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. (Nancy ScheperHughes and Philippe Buorgois, “Introduction: Making Sense of Violence,” 2004, from
Violence in War and Peace, pg. 19-22)
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It encompasses everything from the
routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal violence of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil
(Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in
Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their olfactory
disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these readings violence is located in the symbolic and social
structures that overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and racially patterned
incarcerations that characterize the US “inner city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39).
Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well
Absolutely
central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between wartime
and peacetime violence. Close attention to the “little” violences produced in the
structures, habituses, and mentalites of everyday life shifts our attention to
pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities. More important, it interrupts the voyeuristic
as of useless (i.e. preventable), rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34).
tendencies of “violence studies” that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into complicity with social
and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology
we are positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of “small wars and invisible genocides” (see also ScheperHughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms, hospital
wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and public morgues. The
violence
continuum also refers to the ease with which humans are capable of reducing the
socially vulnerable into expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even
the duty - to kill, maim, or soul-murder. We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum
we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and
for vigilance with respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990;
Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative view that, to the contrary, it
is absolutely necessary
to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in normal
times to those of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we
concede) there is a moral risk in overextending the concept of “genocide” into spaces and corners of everyday life where we
might not ordinarily think to find it (and there
is), an even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize
ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted
as normative behavior by “ordinary” good-enough citizens. Peacetime crimes, such as
prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the mountains and deserts of California,
or the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar institution for managing race relations in the United
States (Waquant, Chapter 39), constitute the “small wars and invisible genocides” to which we refer.
This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and
New York City. These
are “invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away or
hidden from view, but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are
hardest to perceive are those which are right before our eyes and therefore taken for
granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and unfinished theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his
concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday forms of violence hidden in the minutiae
of “normal” social practices - in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of gifts, and
so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and status of violence, especially the links between the
violence of everyday life and explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of “peacetime crimes” crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between wartime and peacetime violence. Peacetime
crimes
suggests the possibility that war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of
public consent applied systematic- ally and dramatically in the extreme context of
war. Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances between the legalized
violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids on “illegal aliens” versus the US government- engineered genocide
in 1938, known as the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.” Peacetime crimes suggests that everyday forms of state violence make a
certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal “stability” is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of
which take the form of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of state violence during peacetime make a
certain kind of domestic “peace” possible. It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a public secret
by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal
growth in the United States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place in the absence of broadbased opposition, let alone collective acts of civil disobedience. The
public consensus is based primarily
on a new mobilization of an old fear of the mob, the mugger, the rapist, the Black
man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally deficient
prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more secure for the
affluent? What can it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic
minority youth in a society, i.e., over 33 percent of young African American men (Prison Watch 2002). In the end it is
essential that we recognize the existence of a genocidal capacity among otherwise
good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a defensive hypervigilance to
the less dramatic, permitted, and even rewarded everyday acts of violence that
render participation in genocidal acts and policies possible (under adverse political or
economic conditions), perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum
we include, therefore, all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization,
depersonal- ization, pseudospeciation, and reification which normalize atrocious
behavior and violence toward others. A constant self-mobilization for alarm, a state
of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to Benjamin’s view of
late modern history as a chronic “state of emergency” (Taussig, Chapter 31). We are trying to
recover here the classic anagogic thinking that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia
among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive the symbolic and structural relations, i.e., between
inmates and patients, between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other “total institutions.”
Making that decisive move to recognize the continuum of violence allows us to see
the capacity and the willingness - if not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the
practical technicians of the social consensus, to enforce genocidal-like crimes
against categories of rubbish people. There is no primary impulse out of which mass
violence and genocide are born, it is ingrained in the common sense of everyday
social life. The mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often fallen
into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sickpoor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of the
moment. Erik Erikson referred to “pseudo- speciation” as the human tendency to classify some individuals or social
groups as less than fully human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremark- able
peacetimes that precede the sudden, “seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of mass violence. Collective
denial and
misrecognition are prerequisites for mass violence and genocide. But so are formal
bureaucratic structures and professional roles. The practical technicians of everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast
Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example, include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful tranquilizers to fretful
and frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of “angel-babies,” and the municipal bureaucrats
Everyday violence encompasses the
implicit, legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular social,
economic, and political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by “symbolic violence,”
who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families.
the violence that is often “nus-recognized” for something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what
Taussig (1989) calls “terror as usual.” All these terms are meant to reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in
war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and “peace-time crimes.” Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and violence
in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in systems of classification, in style, art, and
culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is misrecognized
because its very everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the prerequisite of
the social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of
family farming in the European countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42; see also ScheperHughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989). Following Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-violence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical violence as a crude, uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient
and, according to Arendt (1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While power and symbolic domination are not to be equated
with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be understood as a failure of power - violence, as we are
presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or group of persons.
Rather, we need to understand violence as encompassing all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault basic
human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to recognize these gray zones of violence which are, by
definition, not obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of
reification, depersonalization, institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help answer the question: What makes
mass violence and genocide possible? In this volume we are suggesting that
mass violence is part of a
continuum, and that it is socially incremental and often experienced by
perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims themselves - as
expected, routine, even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments and
institutions from the family, to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military. They harbor the early “warning signs”
(Charney 1991), the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal continuum” (as we call it)
that push social consensus toward devaluing certain forms of human life and
lifeways from the refusal of social support and humane care to vulnerable “social
parasites” (the nursing home elderly, “welfare queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts)
to the militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security prisons, capital punishment; the technologies
of heightened personal security, including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of victimization).
A2: Cap K
Case solves capitalism – rejecting fusion centers as an act of revolutionary
suicide rejects capitalist tools of power; aff is a manifestation of the alt.
Baraka 14 - Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C.
and editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report, (Ajamu, April 30, 2014,
Centre for Research on Globalization,http://www.globalresearch.ca/corporate-oligarchyor-peoples-democracy-countering-the-elite-agenda/5379847) //DS
Even the tepid and formulaic kind of democracy previously permitted in the United States is too constraining for the Lords of
the oligarchy is exposing the class character of the state and
providing left forces a potent weapon for building oppositional consciousness.” For the
Left, “it is absolutely necessary to maintain whatever democratic space still exists
while struggling to expand those spaces and rights.“
For more than a decade, radical analysis has provided reams of studies revealing the
political and economic dominance of an increasingly narrow sector of the U.S. and
European corporate and financial elite. However, the warnings and political implications of this
Capital. “In its arrogance,
domination have received little attention beyond radical and left circles. It took a study by Martin Gilens of Princeton
University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University – and the current best-selling book by Thomas Piketty, Capital in
the Twenty-first Century – both emanating from liberal academia – for the warnings and some of the political questions
associated with the consequences of this domination to finally penetrate mainstream discourse.
The Gilens and Page study focused on the question of democracy in the U.S. and provided data demonstrating that
ordinary people have little influence over a democratic process in the U.S. that has
been captured by the corporate and financial elite. And while they did not use the term “oligarchy,” it
could be reasonably concluded from their data and arguments that the system they described had all of the characteristics of
an oligarchy. Complementing this study is Piketty’s more than 600-page analysis of the evolution of capitalism over the last
the capitalist tendency towards concentration of wealth had
resulted in the disproportionate holding of the world’s wealth in the hands of a tiny
minority of the capitalist class.
200 years. He concluded that
Unfortunately, the current popularity of the analyses offered by Gilens, Page and Piketty has not translated into a deeper
understanding of the nature of the political challenge posed by the dominance of capital – at least not yet. Instead, comments
liberals indicate that many are still desperately holding on to the belief that the worst
excesses of capitalist practices can be modified to ultimately serve the public good.
For example, after demonstrating the looting by the capitalist class taking place
under the current global neoliberal regime, Piketty cannot bring himself to call for even fairly modest
from
reforms, such as the exercise of public power to rein in and control capital. Instead, he offers the tepid recommendation of a
global progressive tax on capital.
But while liberals are engaged in conversation, the oligarchy has been moving to
reinforce its dominance by pre-empting any attempts to exercise democratic control
over their corporate and financial power. Elite opinion and state policies over the
last decade in particular suggest that the Western capitalist/imperialist oligarchy
has concluded that democracy and the rule of law have now become unbearable
constraints for the rule of capital. Even more threatening for the world’s people is that the policies
being pursued under the leadership of the U.S. show that in the midst of an
irrecoverable global capitalist crisis, the U.S. is willing to turn to unregulated
violence and the subversion of states – both democratic and non-democratic – in its
pursuit of full-spectrum military and economic dominance.
The evisceration of democracy in the U.S., represented by decisions like the Supreme Court’s in the McCutcheon case, ruling
that federal caps on combined donations to candidates, parties and political action committees constituted an unconstitutional
infringement on the right to free speech, is no more than the inevitable domestic expression of capital’s global strategy.
It
reflects the position that continued capitalist hegemony requires removing all
barriers preventing the complete dominance of political life by the corporate and
financial oligarchy.
Supporting the coup in Honduras; subverting the democratically-elected
governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Ukraine; backing terrorist jihadist
forces in Syria and Libya; militarizing Africa; and negotiating “free trade”
agreements that remove from democratic accountability transnational corporations,
banks and international financial institutions – these are just some of the
expressions of this global, anti-democratic, anti-people strategy.
The domestic expressions of the move towards the open dictatorship of capital are
not just reflected in the McCutcheon and Citizens United cases, but also last year’s
Shelby v. Holder case, which gutted the Voting Rights Act’s protection against efforts
to undermine black political participation.
Along with the attacks on the structures and practices of formal democracy, the
efforts on the part of the national security state to monitor, limit and disrupt lawful
political opposition also have to be seen as a fundamental component of this antidemocratic strategy. The National Defense Authorization Act, which arguably gave the state the right to indefinitely
detain U.S. citizens; the unrestrained police assaults on working class black and Latinos across the country ; the
increased collaboration between private security entities and the Department
of Homeland Security, FBI and fusion centers – these are all part of the move
toward neo-fascist capitalist rule.
James Petras captures the essence of the ruling class strategy and dilemmas related to democracy and international law:
“The empire-building offensive of the 21st century differs from that of the previous
decade in several crucial ways: neo-liberal economic doctrines are discredited and
electorates are not so easily convinced of the beneficence of falling under U.S.
hegemony. In other words, empire-builders cannot rely on diplomacy, elections and free
market propaganda to expand their imperial reach as they did in the 1990s. To reverse
the retreat and advance 21st century empire-building, Washington realized it had to rely on force and violence.”
The current task: Defending bourgeois democracy while transcending it
The call that many liberals are making to overturn the Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings and overhaul campaign
financing are misguided. Campaign finance reform as part of a broader set of transitional demands for democratic reform is a
legitimate issue to highlight, but it is not enough.
The issue is not campaign finance reform, but democracy.
It would be a historic mistake on the part of the left to believe that it can ignore the systematic undermining of bourgeois
democracy and democratic rights. On a daily basis we see the abrogation or erosion of the rights to peaceful assembly and
association (organize and protest), information and free speech, legal due process, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and
confinement, not to mention the right to participate in government and elections and to be free from government invasions of
privacy.
The idea embraced by the oligarchy that the continued rule of capital globally and in the U.S. can no longer be reconciled with
the shell of democratic processes and rights, even as weak and narrow as those processes are, represents an existential threat
to radical politics as the state increasingly moves toward subversion and repression.
To counter this increasing authoritarianism and attacks on democratic rights, progressive politics in the U.S. require that
popular forces somehow maneuver between the contradictory positions of having to defend traditional bourgeois democracy
and democratic rights while simultaneously advocating and organizing to go beyond its limitations and structures. Why?
Because it is absolutely necessary to maintain whatever democratic space still exists while struggling to expand those spaces
and rights.
Countering the anti-democratic elite agenda requires the building of broad-based
alternative social blocs representing and grounded in labor, women’s groups,
environmental organizations, radical hip-hop, immigrant rights, LGBTQ
communities, black liberation tendencies, indigenous sovereignty movements and
other historically marginalized communities, on the basis of people(s)-centered
human rights, social solidarity and justice and participatory democracy in all aspects
of life, including economic.
The struggle for democracy and democratic rights is becoming increasingly difficult with decisions like McCutcheon that have
politically solidified the open collaboration between big capital and the State and narrowed the options for “normal”
democratic oppositional forms of struggle. That collaboration reveals in graphic terms – more so today than before Citizens
United, McCutcheon and all of the attacks on democracy – the true nature of what passes for democracy in the U.S. and the
interests aligned to subvert it. In its arrogance, the oligarchy is exposing the class character of the state and providing left
forces a potent weapon for building oppositional consciousness.
Building on those contradictions, the fight for democratic reforms and demands for authentic democracy with mass
participation and popular sovereignty in all areas of life could potentially serve as one aspect of a basic left program that
provides strategic points of unity for concentrating areas of left oppositional politics.
Democracy and democratic rights, even in its bourgeois form, was never a gift from the rulers. It was expanded through
struggle, and it will only be through struggle that we are able to protect those hard won advances while we simultaneously
build structures of popular power to transcend its limitations. These are the concrete, objective circumstances that history has
given us.