BREAKING: FBI reverses course on intel sharing shutdown after PJM reporting (UPDATED)
On a conference call this afternoon, the FBI announced a reversal of its decision to cut off the intelligence sharing of information from the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). The FBI shut down reporting to the 77 fusion centers on March 1, and PJM reported on the shutdown yesterday.
The FBI had announced that that it would be resuming the TSC reporting this coming Monday, but without the Personal Information Intelligence (PII) that fusion centers had previously had access to (as I updated on the article yesterday afternoon). Fusion center officials had said yesterday that resuming the TSC reports without the PII would be “effectively useless.”
As recently as Wednesday, FBI officials were telling fusion centers and congressional staffers that PII would not be included in the resumed reporting. Two days and one PJ Media exclusive report later, and the FBI had completely changed course. It remains to be seen if the reporting is as the FBI represented it will be when it resumes on Monday.
Mike Sena, president of the National Fusion Center Association, was on the conference call this afternoon along with representatives of the fusion centers and state and local law enforcement, and confirmed the FBI’s policy reversal.
According to Sena, the TSC will be establishing a coordinating council to help improve relations between the FBI and the fusion centers, and to possibly plan even more enhanced intelligence sharing.
When an encounter with someone on the terror watch list occurs, the fusion center will not only be notified, but the fusion center will be able to pull the data up themselves, according to Sena. One additional change will be that when someone on the terror watch list is pulled over in another state, the state in which the suspect resides will also be notified — a change from previous policy.
One fusion center official I spoke with this afternoon following the conference call said, “This is a stunning reversal. It’s doubtful we would have gotten a 180 degree reversal from the FBI in less than 48 hours without the exposure from PJ Media.”
The FBI deserves recognition for doing the right thing when it came down to crunch time. Thanks go as well to the congressional staffers I spoke with who began making inquiries with the FBI earlier this week, and the many fusion center and law enforcement officials who complained to the FBI about the intel sharing shut down.
We expect a press release from the National Fusion Center Association and we will post it here as an update when it is available.
UPDATE: Here’s the relevant portion of the press release from the National Fusion Center Association about today’s FBI conference call:
During the call, Director Healy stated that he has been working with his staff over the past few months to resolve program policy issues that stopped them from providing immediate TSC hit reporting to fusion centers. Director Healy reported that this week the TSC has started immediate encounter notifications to fusion centers that contain a reference number to the TSC encounter, but that do not contain personal identifying information. He stated that the TSC will provide immediate access information to the TSC encounter data that is located on the secure systems provided by DHS and the FBI at fusion centers. I will send the access instructions in a separate message.
Great work! Keep ‘em honest!!
I sadly suspect the FBI targets more patriotic so-called “rightwing extremist” Americans than Leftist traitors, Nation of Islam traitors, or the people who made all the screening and surveillance necessary: MUSLIMS who take their Islam seriously. Allah forfend that we should concentrate on the real perpetrators of sytematic and relentless Jihad against America. Diversity
That’s a great question. According to Wikipedia, the FBI targeted leftists and rightists at respective rates of 85% and 15%. Naturally these are subjective calls that say nothing of the actual lawlessness (or even the EXISTENCE) of those being targeted. That figure also appears to be pre-9/11 and is muddled by the fact that many extremists are themselves undercover, ie. working to advance exactly the opposite philosophy.
For the average bureaucrat, it’s probably a question of looking busy to keep the cash flowing. Those Virginia McMansions need to be landscaped and occasionally heated in winter, who cares if most threats are real or made-up…
CAIR is very upset about this reversal.
If the C.A.I.R. is unhappy, then all of the rest of us should be very happy.
Call me cynical, but what occurred during the FBI blackout of other agencies that they don’t have to address now that they’ve “restored” communication?
RebeccaH, you are most likely onto something….I suggest the intrepid PJ Tatler teams veer in this direction too.
As one who is familiar with (a few who know) FBI (higher ups)inside out….. I’m just suggesting…..
AWWW, my favorite little news site is growing up. Great job getting the word out there PJM!!
Finally! Exactly what the media should be doing. Great job PJ
Any clue as to why the cutoff happened to begin with?
A security wonk I am not. What the heck is a “fusion center”?
A central information clearing house which can direct a request for data to an appropriate data store.
To cite a hypothetical example, if my local PD picked up someone in a stolen car, and said suspect had no ID, their picture and fingerprints would go to such a center. It would then query FBI, INS, etc., basically asking “Who is this guy?”
Having a regional center do it keeps the major data store holders, like the Bureau, from being overloaded by constant requests from every single sheriff’s department in the Lower Forty-Eight.
By the way, the original system that did this, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), was set up by the Justice Department at the request of the Bureau, Treasury (specifically DEA), and Immigration precisely to clear up the constant overloading of their teletype systems back in the days of what Hunter S. Thompson called “the Mojo Wire”. I worked with the NCIC system over thirty years ago, so I know how it operated.
cheers
eon
….big sigh……”…the constant overloading of their teletype systems back in the days….”
….again, another sigh….my long, long Teletype ribbon all over the floor, long report just completed… Don’t! break! it!….it has to be threaded thru the spindle to be able to be transmitted….there!….it’s going through! yea!…..click, click, click,….finished.
OK…time to go home, three fingers of scotch waiting……
Thanks for the info! I am now edified…:)
Kudos! While the MSM is literally tracking down cookies from a bakery. God help us all.
None of this made any rational sense.
Someone is hiding something. Something happened that required a few days to clean up. Again, consider the current administration… the most corrupt in USA history (fast and furious, black panthers, etc, etc).
The hard part is now finding out what happened that was so important to the administration they would take the most unbelievably stupid step of standing down all domestic criminal activity and tracking information.
At the very minimum this episode meets the legal standard of reckless endangerment.
There are a lot of people at PJM that have a lot of connections… use them. It will be intereseting to see how this plays out. Something happened. What?
Your comment has something to it. Perhaps they didn’t think the interruption would even be noticed until the intel was altered, then quickly reinstated.
I can’t help it, this administration makes me paranoid. I am really hoping that we don’t have any race riots this summer or any other excuse for Obama to declare martial law.
This one article gives me more hope for America than anything I’ve heard or read in the last year. Hurray for the USA! God bless the conservative blogosphere! And keep up the great work, PJM!
Why is PJM focusing on these trivialities instead of reporting the important news like how the Romneys transported their dog 30 years ago?
I hope that that’s sarcasm, you can’t be serious……
More likely is that they were plugging an intelligence leak. Seems that real time distribution of asset/paid informant contacts was becoming problematic as their PIs went missing soon after contact. Too many people with access to life and death intelligence is worse than too few. And with a hostile administration/DOJ seeing this information in real time there could have been “problems”.
Maybe. But there is no indication they would have reinstated the program had they not been outted. This may have been a political ploy, and a clue would be that CAIR was upset when it was reinstated.
Any chance that FBI will be required to provide the “missed information” from the time period that was skipped? Something stinks to high heaven with this whole story. Though I do like the fact the plan was reinstated as a result of a bit of righteous indignation. Keep up the good work.
Good job PJ Tat!!!! I see from the comments here, we do not trust any of our current DOJ/HLS officials or operators! We will need to have an extreme purge of all our Federal B(S)ureaucracies soon.
What must have happened during the missing time period was that they learned of a new and dangerous threat. Seems some guy up in Michigan was planning to introduce a new strain of fever into the general population, transmitted by the scratches of felines. He had been hiding these dastardly
plans for thirty years within the title and lyrics of a song he had written and made popular. But now that they have him for making unspeakable threats just a few days ago to kill the smartest and most lovable messiah to ever be POTUS, they can now resume trying to catch the numerous other right wing revolutionaries.
This coming week, Congress is set to take up another so-called “cybersecurity” bill, H.R. 3523, the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011″ (CISPA). And this time, many of those who joined us to stop SOPA and PIPA are supporting this legislation.
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
Thanks for filling some of the void in the media, PJM, with integrity.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Drones
http://epic.org/privacy/drones/
With this bunch of Marxist thugs in the White House, I’d be inclined to say, “Could we please see the intel that you did not share over the last week? Did you accomplish your mission and hide the ball from local law enforcement?”
Barry would rather loose a million people than loose the White House.