Fusion Center Showdown this Thursday, May 27th + Breaking ARIC Info!
Our big fusion showdown is coming up this Thursday May 27th at City Hall! (301 West 2nd Street) Show up at 10 AM and come prepared for some stone cold Accountability!
We’ve just released a great YouTube video put together by TAG’s Multimedia Director, Gabe Bigger. Check it out and forward it far and wide!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cwEUaC0LA
The video covers Austin Regional Intelligence Center grant documentation TAG recently received as part of a public information request. The document paints a detailed picture of how Austin Police Department’s new fusion center can be extensively utilized to carry out a multitude of public health functions. The document, the 2009 Final Center Proposal, or “Investment Justification”
(see http://www.tagtexas.org/media/comf2c/documents/c2/a44/f17/09FinalFusionCenterProposalGRT-2.pdf), has provisions to:
- include public health agencies as Partner Agencies in the ARIC;
- “leverage” public health agencies;
- hire and maintain a “public health/medical analyst”;
- provide “daily health alerts”;
- engage in the “rapid administration of vaccines”;
- “strengthen medical surge and mass prophylaxis capabilities”;
- develop capabilities to respond to “public health emergencies”;
- support “statewide human & animal health surveillance systems”;
- conduct “epidemiological surveillance”;
If this concerns you as much as it concerns us, please come to City Hall this Thursday @ 10 AM! The City Council will be voting to sign the ARIC Interlocal Agreement which will make the fusion center operational. We must hold the council’s feet to the fire and call on them to delay the signing of the interlocal agreement and drop the public health component from the fusion center entirely!
Please consider calling your council person today and politely asking them to consider voting to delay the signing of the interlocal agreement and be sure to tell them that you do not support the idea of public health activity being carried out at a law enforcement intelligence center.
We hope to see you there!
Contact your City Council:
Mayor Lee Leffingwell
lee.leffingwell@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2250 phone
512-974-2337 fax
Council Member Chris Riley
chris.riley@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2260 phone
512-974-3212 fax
Mayor Pro Tem Mike Martinez
mike.martinez@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2264 phone
512-974-1887 fax
Council Member Randi Shade
randi.shade@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2255 phone
512-974-1888 fax
Council Member Laura Morrison
laura.morrison@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2258 phone
512-974-1886 fax
Council Member Bill Spelman
bill.spelman@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2256 phone
512-974-7655 fax
Council Member Sheryl Cole
sheryl.cole@ci.austin.tx.us
512-974-2266 phone
512-974-1890 fax
Below is a press release sent to the media this morning.
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***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
6:00 a.m., May 26, 2010
MEDIA ADVISORY: PRESS CONFERENCE AT AUSTIN CITY HALL
WHEN: Noon Wednesday (May 26)
CONTACT: Chuck Young, Communications Director, Texans for Accountable Government (TAG), (512) 826-4657, see.why@austin.rr.com; John Bush, Political Director, TAG, (512) 773-6102, libertylover512@yahoo.com
HEAD: Austin Police Involved in Public Health through Fusion Center
AUSTIN, (May 26th, 2010) — A document obtained from the Austin Police Department (“APD”) indicates that the Austin Regional Intelligence Center (“ARIC”) will be used in a variety of public health functions.
The document, the 2009 Final Center Proposal, or “Investment Justification” (http://tagtexas.org/uploads/09FinalFusionCenterProposalGRT-2.pdf), has provisions to:
- include public health agencies as Partner Agencies in the ARIC;
- “leverage” public health agencies;
- hire and maintain a “public health/medical analyst”;
- provide “daily health alerts”;
- engage in the “rapid administration of vaccines”;
- “strengthen medical surge and mass prophylaxis capabilities”;
- develop capabilities to respond to “public health emergencies”;
- support “statewide human & animal health surveillance systems”;
- conduct “epidemiological surveillance”;
“We keep saying it: this fusion center’s mission goes far beyond ‘criminal intelligence’” said Chuck Young, Communications Director of Texans for Accountable Government (“TAG”). “This grant document clearly demonstrates that the ARIC will indeed impact the lives of normal citizens throughout Central Texas who are not part of any criminal investigation. We were concerned with the ARIC’s mission going beyond law enforcement and into public safety, but we had no idea it infringed on public health in so many ways.”
“There’s a pattern of behavior here,” said John Bush, TAG’s Political Director. “This is another example of APD and our City Executive holding back the whole truth. They’re selling the ARIC to the people of Austin and the City Council based exclusively on the criminal intelligence aspects of the fusion center – stopping gang violence, interdicting drug running. But the ARIC isn’t just about crime; it’s about vaccinations, epidemiology, animal health surveillance – all sorts of non-criminal matters. And APD has known this the whole time.”
“The final joke here is that the messaging strategy of ARIC’s advocates is outlined in their grant proposal,” said Young. “Under ‘Challenge Mitigation’, they discuss engaging activists like us in creating a privacy policy – a document we now consider to be virtually meaningless – and focusing media attention on ARIC as a means to gather information and intelligence on criminal suspects. This is in the same document that enumerates countless functions that are way beyond the scope of criminal investigations. We’ve been played, Council has been played, the Media have been played; it’s that simple.”
Background: Texans for Accountable Government (“TAG”) is a non-profit and associated Political Action Committee dedicated to advancing the cause of liberty through trans-partisan local activism. See (http://tagtexas.org). For deeper background on fusion centers, see (http://epic.org/privacy/fusion/#background).
