In a major step for reigning in the unaccountable power of fusion centers, the Maine state House and Senate have passed HP 947, An Act to Increase the Transparency and Accountability of the Maine Information and Analysis Center. The bill creates an Auditor position within the Office of the Attorney General whose job it is to conduct regular reviews of the Main Information and Analysis Center’s (MIAC) activities, to keep records, and to share information with the public. The bill also makes any information MIAC shares with private entities a public record and therefore accessible to the public.
This bill comes after a years-long concerted effort by Maine activists and concerned citizens who have been fighting for accountability in how MIAC collects, shares, and utilizes information about Mainers. In June 2021, a bill that would have defunded the fusion center entirely passed 88-54 out of the Maine House of Representatives before being defeated in the state senate.
Fusion centers are yet another unnecessary cog in the surveillance state—and one that serves the intrusive function of coordinating surveillance activities and sharing information between federal law enforcement, the national security surveillance apparatus, and local and state police, with little to no oversight. Across the United States, there are at least 78 fusion centers that were formed by the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the War on Terror and the rise of post-9/11 mass surveillance. Since their creation, fusion centers have been hammered by politicians, academics, and civil society groups for their ineffectiveness, dysfunction, mission creep, and unregulated tendency to veer into policing political views. As scholar Brendan McQuade wrote in his b
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