In the aftermath of September 11, the Department of Homeland Security established more than 70 so-called "fusion centers" to coordinate federal, state and local efforts at counterterrorism around the country. But today, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported that the centers "forwarded intelligence of uneven quality — oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections" and sometimes used "already public sources… unrelated to terrorism." Ken Dilanian is national security correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.
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