Source: massprivatei.blogspot.com
A damning report on the Maine Information Analysis Center (MIAC) or Fusion Center, reveals just how intertwined corporate and government surveillance of the public has become.
Fusion centers are notoriously secretive about public surveillance and what little we know can be summed up thusly:
“Official secrecy, moreover, cloaks fusion centers, so what little public information is available on a particular fusion center rarely provides much detail on its unique profile.”
The
MIAC Shadow Report reveals how law enforcement goes out of their way to hide who’s actually in charge of public surveillance and is pre-occupied with people committing conventional crimes.
The report begins by revealing what many of us already knew or suspected; fusion centers have been and continue to surveil protesters and activists.
“Fusion centers are the nerve system of mass criminalization” the report warns. A major concern of the authors is how fusion centers use private corporations to conduct secret facial recognition and social media surveillance of ‘people of interest’ and warns that self-governing fusion centers are fraught with peril.
Despite there being a statewide ban of using facial recognition to ID innocent people in Maine there is evidence MIAC uses data brokers to do an end-run around privacy bans.
“This legislation bans the use of the technology in most areas of government and strictly limits its use by law enforcement.9 In our review of BlueLeaks documents, we found documents that raise questions about the MIAC’s use of private data brokers and ability to analyze cell phone data. These systems, like the recently regulated facial recognition technology, also pose existential threats to privacy and other basic rights.”
The report also found that fusion centers are being used to surveil people with mental illnesses, substance abuse, and the homeless….
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