In the latest installment of its Top Secret America investigation, Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin recently filed “Monitoring America.” Priest and Arken report that the US continues to assemble a “vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.” This surveillance apparatus—one in which the goal is to have law enforcement agencies in every locality and every state feed information to the FBI—is used to collect, store, and analyze information about US citizens, many of whom have not been charged with any crime.
The FBI is amassing a colossal database containing personal information on US citizens “whom a police officer or fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously.” All under the guise of the need to prevent violent attacks within the country. Priest and Arkin report that the US Department of Homeland Security “has given US$31 billion in grants since 2003 to state and local governments for homeland security and to improve their ability to find and protect against terrorists, including US$3.8 billion in 2010.”
As a result, 890 state and local law enforcement agencies have filed 7,197 reports in the past two years. Reports include individuals taking cellphone pictures of ferries, government buildings, and the like. According to Priest and Arkin, 103 of those reports have evolved into full investigations, resulting in at least five arrests.
Privacy and civil liberties activists, among others, have grave concerns about the scope of the FBI database and potential for misuse of it. According to Priest and Arkin, FBI officials respond to such concerns by saying “anyone with access has been trained in privacy rules and the penalties for breaking them.”
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