Collaborative Research: Exploring Homeland Security Fusion Centers
In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has supported the creation of 'fusion centers' to share data across government agencies as well as across public and private sectors. This collaborative project will begin to document and evaluate the information sharing practices of fusion centers. Specifically, the research will focus on variations in data sharing across fusion centers. The research questions are (1) What types of data sharing are occurring with, or are enabled by, fusion centers? and (2) What factors contribute to the data-sharing practices of fusion centers? Using qualitative methods, research will be conducted through document analysis of government and media sources, observational studies at government-sponsored security conferences, and a minimum of 40 semi-structured interviews with representatives of government agencies, private companies, and civil society organizations. The intellectual merit of this project is its contribution to an understanding of the implications of new organizational and technological developments for the provision of national security. This study is theoretically valuable because it will contribute to scholarship on surveillance and society, the privatization of security, and the politics of technological systems. In addition to producing refereed articles and conference presentations, this research will provide an important empirical piece to a larger international project called "The New Transparency" which is facilitating multi-national and cross-cultural comparisons of the global security industry.
The broader impacts of this project include an increased awareness of the roles, contributions and implications of fusion centers.
Collaborative Research: Exploring Homeland Security Fusion Centers In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has supported the creation of "fusion centers" to share data across government agencies as well as across public and private sectors. This collaborative research project documented and evaluated the information sharing practices of fusion centers. Specifically, the research focused on variations in data sharing across fusion centers. The research questions were (1) What types of data sharing are occurring with--or enabled by--fusion centers? and (2) What factors contribute to the data-sharing practices of fusion centers? A total of 56 interviews were conducted with representatives from fusion centers, industry partners, and civil society groups. The interviews were conducted predominantly by phone, with the exception of six interviews that were conducted at fusion centers sites, three at civil society organization offices, two at a private industry office, and one at a government and industry conference. The average length for interviews was one hour. In total, thirty-six separate fusion centers are represented in our interview sample. In addition, we collected, coded, and analyzed government reports, as well as emails and other documents obtained through freedom of information requests. Findings were disseminated at academic conferences, at a stakeholder symposium, through academic journals, and through media interviews. The intellectual merit of this project was its contribution to an understanding of the implications of new organizational and technological developments for the provision of national security. This study was theoretically valuable because it contributed to scholarship on surveillance and society, the privatization of security, and the politics of technological systems. In addition to producing refereed articles and conference presentations, this research provided an important empirical piece to a larger international project called "The New Transparency, " which is facilitating multi-national and cross-cultural comparisons of the global security industry. There are several major findings to report. First, fusion centers operate in a manner consistent with what is known as opportunistic federalism, which makes accountability difficult, especially in the absence of shared professional goals. Second, the multiple organizations and databases that are part of fusion centers, engender an environment in which information is migrating beyond original purposes of counterterrorism to include all crimes; this is the result of three factors: fusion centers have to be valuable to their states, there is too little activity that is clearly terrorism related, and fusion center personnel have to use their time and skills constructively. Third, even if local policing needs are met through fusion-center funding and support, many of the activities of fusion-center analysts lend themselves to mission creep and violations of civil liberties. Fourth, many fusion centers are vetting and interpreting suspicious activity reports (SARs) as they enter into law-enforcement and counterterrorism databases, but a range of problems with SARs include subjective and potentially biased assessments, coordination difficulties, questionable reliability and effectiveness, and privacy concerns. The broader impacts of this project include an increased awareness of the roles, contributions and implications of fusion centers, especially with regard to data sharing. When fusion centers do not keep clear records of their data practices, accountability is made much more difficult. Likewise, when controls over data are relaxed to encourage widespread sharing, this can lead to problems with the validity of claims and privacy protections. Publications and conference presentations generated from this project outlined problems with fusion centers and made specific recommendations for correcting those problems. Mechanisms for achieving broader impacts included hosting a symposium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sharing findings with relevant stakeholders, publishing in academic journals, participating in media interviews, and giving lectures at universities and conferences.
