A State Trooper has sued claiming his state used a DHS backed resource agency to illegally collect data on individuals making legal gun purchases or engaged in peaceful protests. Before you say you don’t care, New Hampshire has one of these too! As does every state.
Related: NH Democrat Senators Shaheen and Hassan Vote to Protect “Warrantless” Online Surveillance
They also have them in the District of Columbia, Guam, The US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
In the Maine case,
George Loder, 50, of Scarborough is suing the center alleging he was demoted after he told his bosses that MIAC was collecting and maintaining data illegally, including information about people who had applied to buy guns from firearms dealers, those who legally protested a proposed Central Maine Power Co. transmission line project and those who worked at a Maine international camp for Israeli and Arab teens.
After a bit of looking, there are 79 of these Fusion Centers around the country, including here in New Hampshire. These post 9/11 information analysis centers are,
“…established as an all-crimes/all-hazards, counter-terrorism information and analysis center providing strategic and tactical information directed at the most serious threats to the State of New Hampshire and its people. The center monitors information from a variety of open and classified sources, analyzes that information, and provides an information product that will serve public safety and private sector interests whose mission it is to serve the homeland security, public safety and emergency management needs of their constituents and the State of New Hampshire. The center assists in the development and use of meaningful, real-time metrics in the effective and efficient deployment of public safety resources.”
That includes, apparently, observing social media and internet activity.
And it’s not just them, they have an online suspicious activity reporting form you can fill out. If you see something say something!
And all that business aside this begs a few questions given the desire of Democrats in New Hampshire to push through Red Flag Laws. Statutory acts of force that abrogate Constitutional protections and due process rights. A trend that, if accepted, could easily extend to a much more extensive range of state-sanctioned activities.
Like efforts on the left to create unique free speech carve-out for legislators and family members online activity that could punish any opposing speech they decided was offensive while leaving them unimpacted. We already have a stat police division engaging in this sort of surveillance, so how difficult is it to task them with targeting individuals or even setting them up?
No, that would never happen. Sure it would.
If you forgot, Janet Delfuco found, buried in thousands of pages of discovery, sealed secret search warrants for surveillance on her and anyone online with whom she engaged. Janet has a federal lawsuit in-process against the New Hampshire Attorney Generals office.
To my mind, the confluence of these efforts and the actual ongoing secret surveillance are troublesome.
It’s one thing to have agency coordination for emergency management and another thing entirely to abuse these resources to build secret databases on law-abiding citizens engaged in a legal activity because you may find a use for it later.
It functions as a de facto suppression of free speech. And I’m not saying the State is doing or has done anything unconstitutional or illegal (with its Information Analysis Center), I have no specific knowledge of that, but there is significant potential for abuse. Just look at how the Obama Administration missed the intelligence community and the surveillance state. They spied on the media, allies, members of congress, activist groups, and private citizens. They even used that machine to destroy an elected president.
New Hampshire’s court system and AG’s office is not exactly known for being White Hats dedicated to the pursuit of justice.
