An Open Letter to the Joint Base Lewis-McChord Fusion Center Police Intelligence/Crime Analysis Unit

Subject: Lawful First Amendment Activities and You

We know you monitor this website on a regular basis and we would like to communicate directly to you. The report you issued on March 26th 2010 (see extract below) on recent efforts by law-abiding citizens to compile information from various Washington State law enforcement agencies cannot pass without comment. You have repeatedly attempted to characterize the lawful first amendment activities of citizens as something nefarious or with ulterior motives. You pass this off as "analysis" and "warning" as a means to inflate your true value. Your attempts are then regurgitated and placed cut and paste into other daily summaries across the land. You've taken the art of pre-criminalizing to a new level Mr Chesbro.

We have seen from the records that have been obtained openly under Washington State law the depths you will go to try and justify the continued violation of the rights of your fellow citizens. We see, from the record, what you would like to keep hidden. We see how you amalgamate and "fuse" unrelated data to create "criminality". You lap at the teat of government largesse to feed yourselves and your families while attempting to pre-criminalize the actions of your fellow citizens engaging in the public obligation of any member of a democratic republic - the right to dissent.

We see how you monitor our websites, denigrate our opinions, and laugh at our efforts to challenge policies we believe to be deeply wrong and immoral. We are not the ones that have rolled over local governments and deployed machines of death and destruction through peaceful waters.

We are not the ones exploiting local municipalities and leaving local taxpayers to pay the security bill - a bill that is much higher because of the misinformation YOU generate. We are not the ones finding ways around existing statutes to monitor the activities of United States Persons. We have not sent spies into your organization to disrupt its operations and implicate and incite. Yet we pay our taxes which pay for these very activities.

This state has a constitution. The people, by an overwhelming majority, chose to create Open Records laws following the excesses of the military intelligence and other federal security organs in the 60's and 70's. Then, as now, peaceful citizens worked for change, freedom for all, the end to unjust and horrific war - but were treated as the enemy - a threat - suspicious - needing monitoring.

We know the federal statutes that also came into existence at the same time have been side-stepped by moving the domestic surveillance monkey from the gatekeepers behind the green door to the military police. You are so bold as to specifically state as much in your primer on Military Police Intelligence Operations. How shameful!

The only entities needing monitoring are you and your ilk. You are not James Bond nor will you find any terrorist amongst us. We few, we noble few, work to keep government of the people, by the people, and for the people, a reality.

Our laws are clear and based on three important principles:

• The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them.
• The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.
• The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.

As our Washington State Attorney General has stated, "Citizens can control their government only if they remain informed about the decisions their government officials are making."

We seek information about those decisions, the persons making them, the methods employed to squash dissent and disrupt public discourse. You would be advised to consider a similar review of those that are directing your efforts against your fellow citizens, the meaning of the oath you took, the constitution you defend and the freedom you hold so dear. The real threats to your organization are inside the gate - gangs, right-wing extremists, corrupt officials, and lack of supply and contracting oversight.

(FOUO) Local Activist Groups Collecting Data About WA Law Enforcement Agencies

Joint Base Lewis-McChord Fusion Center - Police Intelligence / Crime Analysis Unit 3/26/10:

(FOUO) Over the past three months, a local activist group has sent public records requests to every sheriff department in the state, making requests for emails, payroll lists, cell phone numbers, internal phone directories, records indexes, and administrative records processing manuals. Responses to the request received have been posted online at http://mynetblog.com/media/docs/massrequest.

(FOUO) The activists have also uploaded hundreds if not thousands of pages of records rfom the City of Tacoma to http://mynetblog.com/media/docs/tacomadocs.

ANALYST COMMENT: The Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the open records laws of the several states are an important part of effective government. As the WA Attorney General has stated: "Citizens can control their government only if they remain informed about the decisions their government officials are making." It should be noted however that while information requests can be used to stay informed of government activity and actively participate in the democratic process, they can also be used to obtain information with the intent of disrupting government functions and circumventing law enforcement operations. When information is shared across jurisdictions there can also be confusion as to what is releasable and what is not. When sharing information, all agencies should take care to ensure that information exempt from public release is properly marked and that such information is protected from inappropriate disclosure.