This past Friday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the Virginia Department of State Police in an effort to uncover whether the federal government has been interfering in the state's open government legislation. EPIC suspects that the feds are trying to use the state police to pressure the Virginia legislature into passing a bill that will put limits on the state's open government laws and will encourage citizens to inform on one another by protecting anonymous tipsters from defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuits.

Why do the feds care about HB1007, the Virginia bill that open government advocates have decried as a major affront to privacy, civil liberties, and government accountability? In a word, it comes down to “fusion.”

Fusion centers unite feds and states on terror… and drugs, and weather, and crime, etc.

One of the most far-reaching yet least-scrutinized recommendations to come out of of the 9/11 Commission Report's section on intelligence reform was the start of a number of efforts aimed at breaking down the walls between local, state, and federal law enforcement and disaster response. The thinking went that in terms of both prevention and response, effectively fighting terror would require a much higher level of centralized coordination among federal and state law enforcement and emergency services than had ever been previously contemplated.

The ultimate expression of this new federal/state integration was a nationwide network of “fusion centers”—low-profile, highly secure sites where federal and state officials with top secret clearance meet in order to collect, analyze, and redistribute information on “all hazards, all threats.” The list of hazards and threats covered by these centers initially started with terrorism but soon expanded to include crime, gangs, weather-related natural disasters, and anti-war protesters. (Okay, just kidding about that last one… sort of. As opponents of domestic surveillance often point out, all domestic spying operations eventually turn their sights on political dissidents, if only to justify their funding in the absence of other threats.)

The ACLU hosts an interactive map of the 40+ fusion centers in the US; check out the location nearest your home, and then you'll know who's picking up the phone when you dial in an anonymous tip to a statewide counter-terrorism hotline.

Feds: “Yes, Virginia, you'll regret not passing this”

via Fusion Center meltdown: Feds stifling open government in VA?.