Wednesday, April 1, 2009

All Threat Fusion Centers A Threat To Civil Liberties

Recently, this blog and the Collin County Observer blog posted stories about the Department of Homeland Security All Threat Fusion Center located in Collin County.
DBCC Blog: Free Speech, Privacy And National Security
CCO Blog: Keystone Kounter-Terrorism
All Threat Fusion Centers are domestic intelligence gathering operations spread out across the U.S. that collect and interpreted data on ordinary citizens and synchronize that consolidated intelligence with local and national law enforcement agencies. Formed in the wake of 9/11 as a way to search out domestic terrorist threats, fusion centers today are criticized on all sides for things like improper surveillance of the supporters of third-party presidential candidates and an ambiguous mission directive that has lead to power overreaching.

The U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment held a public hearing on Wednesday where several groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on Islamic-American Relations, spoke against the fusion centers.

“Fusion centers have experienced a mission creep in the last several years, becoming more of a threat than a security device," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office in a statement. "With no overarching guidelines to restrict or direct them, these centers put Americans’ privacy at huge risk. We need our government to take a long, hard look at what’s going into these centers and, frankly, what’s coming out.”

The Department of Homeland Security itself has expressed concern that fusion centers pose a number of privacy risks to American citizens. In a December 2008 report, DHS's Privacy Office detailed seven risks posed by the centers:
  1. Justification for fusion centers
  2. Ambiguous Lines of Authority, Rules, and Oversight
  3. Participation of the Military and the Private Sector
  4. Data Mining
  5. Excessive Secrecy
  6. Inaccurate or Incomplete Information
  7. Mission Creep
The ACLU has highlighted known invasions of privacy by fusion center, including surveillance of third-party presidential candidate supporters, various religious groups and anti-war activists. The group is asking the DHS office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to launch independent investigations into the following incidents:
* Inappropriate references "social, religious and political ideologies including support of third party presidential candidates such as Congressman Ron Paul and former Congressman Bob Barr" in a February 2009 report on the "modern militia movement" authored by the Missouri Information Anaysis Center. Report available here.

* A May 2008 report entitled “Universal Adversary Dynamic Threat Assessment” written by a private contractor that labeled environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Audubon Society as "organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism.” The report, which also criticized the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front, among others, is available here.

* The alleged improper monitoring and dissemination of communications of activists with the DC Anti-War Network.

* The labeling of national and state anti-war groups as "extremists in a report entitled a “Protective Intelligence Bulletin” that was issued in March, 2006 by the DHS Intelligence Branch of the Threat Management Division of the Federal Protective Service. The report is available here.

* A February 2009 report authored by the North Central Texas Fusion System called "Prevention Awareness Bulletin." The report described an alleged conspiracy of among the Muslim civil liberties group, CAIR, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, among others to foster an "environment for terrorist groups to flourish." That report can be read here.
The Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) released the following statement regarding a warning distributed to law enforcement agencies by "The North Central Texas Fusion System," operated by the Collin County Department of Homeland Security in the county sheriff's office building, concerning its legitimate political lobbying activities:
"CAIR is deeply troubled that the North Central Texas Fusion System bulletin labels monitoring the legal activities of American Muslims exercising their constitutional privileges as ‘imperative,’" their statement said. The group "believes it is time for Congress to conduct a deeper evaluation of our nation’s new domestic surveillance infrastructure...

Based on this and other recent incidents and initiatives targeting the Muslim community nationwide, we are concerned that the rights of American Muslims to participate fully in our country’s political process and practice their faith free of government intrusion is under assault.”
Note: In reporting on the Collin County Fusion Center this blog and the Collin County Observer blog will likely appear in future warnings distributed to law enforcement agencies by "The North Central Texas Fusion System."

Texans for Life Press For Continued Abstinence-Only Sex Education In Texas Schools

Legislation that would end the requirement that Texas public schools devote attention to abstinence-only sex education was before the House Public Education Committee on Tuesday for public comment. The bill, HB 741 by State Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio), would remove much of the controversial and unsound language from the Texas Education Code that places abstinence education above responsible instruction about sex education and sexually transmitted diseases.

Texas receives more federal abstinence-only education funding than any other state in the country, yet Texas has the nation’s third-highest teen pregnancy rate. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services (TDSHS) a Texas teen gets pregnant every 10 minutes.

According to a report (PDF Full/Summary) released in February by the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) a majority of Texas schools use scare tactics and teach false information in their sex education classes. TFN's two-year study of education materials from 990 Texas school districts showed that about 94 percent of public schools use abstinence-only programs that usually pass moral judgments while giving inaccurate information on contraception and health screenings or ignoring the subjects altogether.

A recent, a large federal 2008 study, again confirms previous studies in its finding that abstinence eduction that tell teens to "just say no to sex" is not as effective as comprehensive sex education. "Taking a [abstinence] pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior, but it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking," according to Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Ms. Rosenbaum's report, that appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics, highlights that:
Teenagers who receive abstinence-only sex education and pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a large federal survey released last month.
Ignoring all facts and evidence that the "just say no" abstinence-only sex education approach does not stop or even reduce the numbers of teens who have sex, Texans for Life Coalition representative Kyleen Wright gave testimony before the House Public Education Committee on Tuesday making a "full court press" for the ideologue position that "abstinence-only" should be taught in Texas schools. It was Wright who successful lead the fight to keep any medically accurate information about contraception and disease prevention out of new Texas high school health textbooks in 2004.

The fact that abstinence-only sex education translates to a higher tax payer burden to support teen mothers and their babies was all but ignored. Texas Medicaid paid for 17,322 deliveries to teen mothers aged-13-17 last year at a cost of $41 million. That $41 million is on top of the many millions of dollars tax payers are spending on a government sponsored abstinence-only public school sex education program that is a proven failure!!

To read a live blog of the Texas House Public Education Committee meeting click here.


Kathy Miller's news conference
announcing the report
Kathy Miller, president of the Freedom Network’s Education Fund, said in a late February news conference announcing the groups Texas education report that, "we must stop burying our heads in the sand about high teen birth and STD rates and make sure young people get the medically accurate information they need to protect their health. . ." Texas continues to have one of the nation's highest teen pregnancy rates despite receiving more federal abstinence funding than any other state. (Watch TFN's "Sex Ed...Texas Style" videos)

Texas Gov. Perry: No Stem Cell Science In Texas

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who strongly supports teaching only "abstinence" sex education in Texas schools and who reappointed young earth (earth age only 6,000 years) creationist Don McLeroy as chairman of the Texas State Board of Education to oppose teaching evolution in public schools, also promises to prevent stem cell research in Texas as he touts his record for passing more restrictions on stem cell research than any previous governor.

[Apparently, Gov. Perry does not think Texas needs the high tech stem cell business dollars flowing into Texas to replace the crumbling telecommunication industry that is rapidly disappearing from Texas' "silicon prairie" corridor.]

Governor Perry, a leading general in the Republican Party's War On Science, promises that a story like this will never come out of Texas:
ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2009) — In a genetic engineering breakthrough that could help everyone from bed-ridden patients with failing heart muscles to people afflicted with muscular dystroph, a team of American researchers—including 2007 Nobel Prize winner Mario R. Capecchi—have created a "switch" that allows mutations to be turned on in muscle stem cells to monitor muscle regeneration in a living mammal.

"This is basic science at its best," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This study has not only shown us how stem cells turn into muscle in the living body, but brought us closer to the day when we can use stem cells to repair wounded flesh or a maimed physique."

Read the complete story at ScienceDaily.com

Democrats Can Win In Republican Strongholds

A special election to fill a vacant U.S. House seat in the heavily Republican Upstate New York 20th Congressional District demonstrates that Democrats can win in heavily Republican areas, even Collin County, Texas, with a focused campaign and coordinated help from the Democratic Party.

With all precincts reporting from Tuesday's special election voting, Democrat Scott Murphy, a venture capitalist, had 77,344 votes and Jim Tedisco, the Republican leader in NY's State Assembly, had 77,285. The Democrat leads by 65 25 vote in the Congressional District that has approximately 400,000 total registered voters and 70,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats, and where former President George W. Bush carried the district twice.

Election officials and outside observers said that about 5,900 absentee ballots had been received as of Monday. But about 10,000 absentee ballots were mailed, and those still out have another week to return -- 13 days for ballots from overseas and from members of the military -- as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.

Tedisco and Murphy were vying to replace Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in the House; Gillibrand was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Clinton in January when she became Secretary of State.

Murphy ran an campaign focused on his record as a successful businessman and his strong support for President Obama's economic recovery programs. Tedisco, the Republican, ran on his opposition to President Obama's economic recovery programs and the Republican platform of tax cuts and deregulation. Murphy also had strong active support from both the local and national Democratic Party organizations. Murphy's website, that his campaign kept active and current with issues, news and videos, no doubt, also gave him an advantage. Tedisco's campaign website was more a old "billboard" type of site, other than a campaign Twitter feed on his main page.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele had made recapturing this traditionally GOP seat a priority. He heavily invested here and personally visited twice to campaign. Murphy's campaign success against a Republican candidate that started with a 20 point advantage, will like cause concern in the ranks of House Republicans, like Texas 3rd District Representative Sam Johnson and Texas 4rd District Representative Ralph Hall, who continue to vote as a block against President Obama's economic recovery programs. The Texas 3rd and 4th Congressional Districts meet in Collin County.

The 3rd Congressional District, shaded in yellow on the map includes the southwestern portion of Collin County and the Northeastern corner of Dallas County. The 4th Congressional District, shaded in pink on the map includes the remaining portions of Collin County and four counties of north east Texas.