3 Responses to “Meeting with CIAC representative, Lance Clem”

1. feysal h. says:

   May 13, 2010 at 7:36 pm

   After watching the interview with Lance Clem and various other interviews done by Cat/John, something is nagging at me. If you don’t like what any of the people have to say, than why are you wasting your time talking to them? After every interview, which are as informative as they can be, a recap video is done talking about how they didn’t like the answers. Stop wasting peoples $$ dancing all over the country talking to FC personnel if they all say the same thing. What do you expect them to say? “oh yes we are big brother and we are spying on everyone!” I still don’t get the point of the whole field trips to fusion centers. You don’t think other FCs are watching the recap videos? Why would they want to talk to you if all you are going to do is bad mouth them and complain afterwards? How many FCs denied you a face to face or tour? I can probably guess why. Wake up guys. As someone said on the ODF facebook page, you are going about this all wrong.

   Reply
   • BenTX says:

     May 19, 2010 at 1:52 pm

     Well, every fusion center is different and focuses on different things. They all have varying degrees of protections for civil liberties. We are visiting to find out about what each specific fusion center is about. Someone needs to be visiting these fusion centers to let them know that the public eye is on them. That way they are practicing outside 28 CFR part 23. We aren’t just visiting fusion centers. We are meeting with people locally along the way, and getting them active to hold their local fusion center accountable. We are getting a hold of documents that are supposed to be public, but often times aren’t, like privacy policies and memorandums of understanding. These are things that can be used in court to hold the fusion center to the standards the NCISP guidelines set for them. Yes, we would like for fusion centers to be gone completely. It’s just not going to happen by our hand. We don’t have the leverage to make them go away, so we do what we can instead. We are about public awareness of fusion centers, as well as getting the documents and challenging them on their practices.

     I am also the National Coordinator for open records requests with Operation Defuse. We are about to send out open records requests to all 72 fusion centers in this country. And not simple requests either. We are asking for every budgetary document, every strategic report that isn’t classified, every interlocal agreement. We are asking for stacks of information to put in our own fusion center that we are creating. Our fusion center will be citizen’s fusion center about fusion centers. That way, anyone can go to the online fusion center and find out anything about their local fusion center.

     We aren’t just visiting with these officials and then badmouthing them later. We are visiting them and ensuring that they act as transparently as possible. If we don’t understand what each fusion center is like, we are making our claims on broad based assumptions. We should never demonize the people, especially without understanding really what they do. Please, I would like to hear a better approach, ways to improve what we do. We are learning a lot everyday on the road. This is our first trip, and our first meetings with fusion center representatives outside of Austin. We are trying to make our trips as productive as possible, so do you have any suggestions?

     We have been denied access to 3 fusion centers when planning this trip. We have had access to 3 fusion centers so far. The 3 that denied, we will still visit and just ask them in person if we can interview them. Believe it or not, visiting with these fusion center personnel actually gets us in to more fusion centers. We are getting fusion center representatives that we meet with to email their friends at other fusion centers and let them know we are normal people and not “terrorists”.

     Reply
   • CatherineBleish says:

     July 17, 2010 at 1:09 pm

     Hey there, thanks for your feedback.

     I actually disagree with your statements about going about it all wrong - at the NOLA National Department of Homeland Security Fusion Center Conference we were approached by over a dozen fusion center directors, folks we had never met, folks we had met with, and some just curious.

     The point is to show them we are not a threat to them, even though we disagree. Other than the strategic reports smearing us, these ODF fusion center visits are the only opportunity they’ve had to get to know who we are - and believe it or not, most of them like us. And our tour scheduling has become MUCH MORE EASY since visiting so many, our struggles began primarily at the beginning.

     Every fusion center is DIFFERENT and gives DIFFERENT answers - we also do grassroots training courses in each city we visit.

     I am curious, though, what do you think is a better way? Instead of talking “smack” why not join us and help?

     Reply

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

CAPTCHA Code