Just like COINTELPRO of the 1960s and 1970s, the cat is entirely out of the bag and every government body out there is putting together official and unofficial "fusion centers". In fact we can play that game too, and more easily than a whole lot of people might think.

The thing about the government "fusion centers" revolves around their access to restricted data and of course their own proprietary data. I remember some of the big controversies twenty years ago when this was being farmed outside the US in order to sidestep some of the regulations on it, now a lot of that information went commercial anyway except for the various intelligence agency reports which have retained the "work product" protection that private detectives get when working for clients.

We now have cyberstalking laws, which are maybe not worth the electrons they were propsed with when someone has government sanction, but also take a look at the whole "government sanction" issue for a moment.

The expected reciprocity between American law enforcement agencies and the Mexican government has been directly tied to the deaths of several hundreds of innocent people in the Mexican "drug wars". That is not in any small part at least partially attributable to training and intelligence information sourced from government databases, and even government trained personnel who went open market. I know of several cases where restricted financial information was provided to kidnappers in Mexico from the US government so that the kidnappers would be in a better position to determine their victims ability to pay. In many of these cases, the ransom situations were thinly disguised as "legal proceedings" when arrangements were made for someone to be arrested on some obscure laws or interpretations of laws and then situations presented as "it will take X amount of money to get your daughter home".

Now we can and do hear cases almost every week of this happening in the US. How much of the targeting information comes from commercial sources vs the government is purposefully obscured. I do personally know of at least one case where government sources were also using their credibility as government sources in order to purposefully misrepresent "intelligence information" on a certain individual and one of the main reasons for the secrecy and lack of documentation on it was they know what their criminal liability is on the matter and are doing what they can to protect their people from legal retaliation.

The thing is, specific action taken against individuals and groups based on information that comes from these fusion centers is the wave of the future, and for better or for worse, that's the game. They have their own interests but represent the new "in club" of the information age.

While it might be useful to know which deputies are screwing the new hires in the local department, you also have the issue of discrimination in the use of the weapon of information. I don't consider it a major moral or freedom issue whether or not some 46 year old deputy nails some 26 year old "cadet" in some patrol car kink on the side of the freeway, but if either one had given me reason for needing to get back at them for something? Well that's another matter. Heck, maybe even if they were just family or allies of someone I hated.

It can sound crass and selfish to be that way, but look at the alternative of using some vague ideological belief when in fact, the vast majority of those "fusion centers" are probably suffering from information overload anyway.

I see it as a good idea for people on our side of things to get familiar with how these things work, and identify the players in your areas of interest.