American Civil Liberties Union

The official verdict is finally in, thanks to a congressional report out today: state and local law enforcement intelligence “fusion centers” funded by the Department of Homeland Security are failing to safeguard both our constitutional rights and our security.

Back in 2007, when the ACLU began investigating the growth of these centers, there was little public information available about where these centers were, who was in charge of them, who participated, what information they collected or what they did with it. Our first report highlighted “excessive secrecy” as one of the major problems with fusion centers, recognizing that a lack of public accountability has too often in the past allowed police intelligence operations to turn their focus away from suspected criminals and toward political activists, racial and religious minorities, and immigrant communities. In a 2008 follow-up report, we chronicled many of the early signs of trouble in these institutions.

I finally had a chance to read this extended debate between the security-ologist Bruce Schneier and critic-of-religion Sam Harris (yes that Sam Harris) over whether we should profile Muslims in airport security.

First of all, Sam Harris performs a useful function by articulating a more sophisticated version of what is the intuitive position for many Americans, which runs something like: “we know who the danger is, it ain’t old ranchers from Texas or pretty blondes from San Diego—it’s Muslims, so let’s focus airport security on them.” (I hear this regularly myself when discussing airline security in public.) By fearlessly arguing for such profiling—which many people might quietly suspect makes sense—Harris sets it forth explicitly so that it can be explicitly debunked. And Schneier not only debunks it, he demolishes it.

Privacy protection, and the debate about whether to house information-sharing programs in a civilian or military agency, dominated three congressional hearings on cybersecurity this week.

In separate hearings Tuesday in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee, leaders of the intelligence community called cyberattacks the greatest threat to the U.S. at this time—but admitted that the kinds of catastrophic attacks imagined by reporters and cyber experts were only a "remote" possibility in the near future.

UPDATE: Due to a winter storm approaching Washington, D.C., tomorrow's House Homeland Security Committee hearing on cybersecurity has been postponed for a later date.

As Congress debates cybersecurity legislation, one of the most significant questions legislators are tackling addresses where to house an information sharing program that would allow the private sector to hand over Americans' most private online information to the government: in a civilian or a military agency?