“Although individual employees have engaged in misconduct or inappropriate behavior, we did not find evidence that misconduct is widespread in USSS,” the report (download PDF) from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office summarizes. The IG’s investigation was prompted by reports of hiring prostitutes and excessive drinking by agents on an advance team for a presidential visit to Cartagena, Colombia.

Washington Post summary of the report.

(UPDATE; While it doesn’t cite the New York Times story directly, a TSA blog item posted mid-day today seems to refute the story’s premise that the amount of data being examined has expanded.)

The database searches extend beyond the standard “Secure Flight” data screens that compare date of birth, name and gender against watch lists, and beyond passengers entering the country, the Times aid.

“It is unclear precisely what information the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessments, given the extensive range of records it can access, including tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information,” the Times said.

One official from a privacy group called the data screening “a pre-crime assessment every time you fly.” Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project added: “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.”

Details directly from the report on what was found:

“Two potentially duplicative investments totaling about $30 million at DHS that are used to “book” and process apprehended illegal aliens who are suspected of committing criminal and administrative violations, commonly referred to as immigration enforcement booking management;

“Four such investments totaling about $31 million at DOD, which include two investments totaling $16 million that track health care status of warfighters and two investments totaling $15 million that manage dental care.”

The GAO said the Department of Defense cancelled one of the health care systems and will consolidate the dental systems “but had not developed a plan on how this was to be accomplished.”

Homeland Security cited “unique requirements” for the dual immigration booking systems, “but were unable to provide analysis showing why one system couldnot satisfy the unique requirements.”

→ Read the full GAO report (PDF)

“Allegations of employee misconduct that are entered into Department of Homeland Security (DHS) case management systems are assigned one of several case allegation types; however, there is no primary use of force designation. As a result, we were unable to identify the total number of excessive force allegations and investigations involving CBP employees,” the just-released report said.

The inspector general began investigating incidents of excessive force in 2012 after media reports about an undocumented immigrant dying in 2010 while in Customs and Border Patrol custody in Southern California. Congressional calls for an investigation followed the stories.

Some 21,000 records of possible excessive force incidents were turned over to investigators, who narrowed their review down to just over 2,000 records that seemed most likely to indicate excessive force from 2007 to 2012. It found 1,323 that might include excessive force or use of force. (See below)

The agency’s own tracking of use of force reports, which began in 2010 to “gain insight into use of force trends, training, and equipment needs,” but is not used “for discipline purposes,” showed 1,188 use of force incidents in 2011 and 935 in 2012 — mostly with border patrol and most involving “less than lethal devices.”

The inspector general investigation concluded that Customs and Border Patrol did an acceptable job of use-of-force training even as the size of its workforce expanded significantly during the years studied.

Results of an internal review of use of force that the agency began after the media reports was included in the inspector general’s report, but was largely redacted.

The three recommendations made in the report:

• CBP should work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to implement a method to identify excessive force allegations in its case management system.
• Develop processes to incorporate information regarding assaults on agents that do not result in the use of force into its analysis of use of force incidents.
• Evaluate and act upon field audit results.

The inspector general’s office said it would also “modify its case management system to identify in greater detail incidents involving excessive use of force allegations.”

The end result: “Our country is still not as safe as it could and should be,” Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kean declare in a New York Times Op-ed piece today labelled “Homeland Confusion.”

The column is timed to today’s release of a report by a task force empaneled by The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands and the Aspen Institute’s Justice & Society Program; Hamilton and Kean served on that committee. (Read the report below). The report sets out why it’s important to consolidate a congressional system in which 100 committees and subcommittees now have jurisdiction over pieces of the department. The graphic below, from the report, gives you an idea of the very large number of Congressional touchpoints. (Click image for larger version).

Subsidized military equipment was used to patrol a pumpkin festival in New Hampshire and at an Easter egg hunt in California, Funds were used  for surveillance equipment at a spring training facility in Arizona and for a “zombie apocalypse” demonstration at a counter-terrorism summit at a California resort.

The take on it from the Los Angeles Times: “The study found that some cities and towns had created implausible attack scenarios to win federal grants, and had scrambled at the end of each fiscal year to buy extra, unnecessary gadgets to spend excess cash.”

The senator who commissioned the study said the Department of Homeland Security “has been unable to establish goals or metrics to ensure that funds were used to make Americans safe, and cannot accurately measure how much safer we are today after spending $35 billion.”

If lawmakers who approved the program a decade ago could have peered in to the future, “We would have been frustrated to learn that limited federal resources were now subsidizing the purchase of low-priority items like an armored vehicles to protect festivals in rural New Hampshire, procure an underwater robot in Ohio and to pay for first responder attendance at a five-day spa junket that featured a display of tactical prowess in the face of a “zombie apocalypse,”  Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says in a release from his office. 

Among the cities and regions examined:

• Arizona: Phoenix and Tucson 
• California: Bakersfield, Oxnard, Riverside, Sacramento, and San Diego 
• Colorado: Denver 
• Indiana: Indianapolis 
• Louisiana: Baton Rouge and New Orleans 
• Minnesota: Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul) 
• Ohio: Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo 
• Oklahoma: Oklahoma City and Tulsa 
• National Capital Region which includes the District of Columbia and parts of Virginia and Maryland.

Full Report (PDF) 

EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch: “Drones are a powerful surveillance tool that can be used to gather extensive data about you and your activities. The public needs to know more about how and why these Predator drones are being used to watch U.S. citizens.”

EFF on Wednesday also sued the FAA, claiming it is “foot-dragging” is releasing data about public drone flights.

Full Story | The lawsuit (PDF) | Second suit filed against FAA over drones 

I strongly disagree with the report’s core assertion that fusion centers have been unable to meaningfully contribute to federal counterterrorism efforts.

“Pools of ineptitude,” is the phrase turned in a Washington Post headline this week in regard to the investigative findings by from the U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

“But after nine years — and regular praise from officials at the Department of Homeland Security — the 77 fusion centers have become pools of ineptitude, waste and civil liberties intrusions, according to a scathing 141-page report… .”

Said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma: “It’s troubling that the very ‘fusion’ centers that were designed to share information in a post-9/11 world have become part of the problem.”

Intelligence from the centers is of “uneven quality – oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections, occasionally taken from already-published public sources, and more often than not unrelated to terrorism,” the report states.

According to the Post, the Department of Homeland Security “condemned the report and defended the fusion centers, saying the Senate investigators relied on out-of-date data.”

Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News lauded the way the report and investigation were accomplished, call it “a rare example of congressional oversight in the classical mode.  It was performed by professional investigators over a two-year period.  It encountered and overcame agency resistance and non-cooperation.  And it uncovered — and published — significant new information that demands an executive branch response.  That’s the way the system is supposed to work.”

Is there a fusion center near your market? PublicIntelligence.net has locations and a map.

→ Download full report

→ Press release

→ Post story