Feds Tout New Domestic Intelligence Centers | Threat Level | Wired.com

Feds Tout New Domestic Intelligence Centers | Threat Level | Wired.com: "Federal, state and local cops are huddling together in domestic intelligence dens around the nation to fuse anti-terror information and tips in ways they never have before, and they want the American people to know about it — sort of.

Some of the nation’s top law enforcement and anti-terror officials got together to hold press briefings Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at the second annual National Fusion Center conference held in San
Francisco.

Homeland Security Under Secretary Charlie Allen, formerly of the
CIA, described how sharing threat assessments, and even the occasional raw intel, with the new fusion centers marks a cultural shift from the Cold War era. Back then, spies treated everyone, other departments and agencies included, as suspicious.

'Things have changed remarkably in Washington. We are talking to each other,' Allen said Tuesday. 'I am from the shadows of the CIA where in the Cold War, we followed a different model. That model does not apply for the kinds of threats we have today that are borderless. The threats are so different and so remarkably dangerous for our citizens.'

The fifty or so U.S. fusion centers are where the federal, state and local cops share intelligence, sift data for clues, run down reports of suspicious packages and connect dots in an effort to detect and thwart terrorism attacks, drug smuggling and gang fighting."