Collaborative Research: Gauging the Mission Creep Potentials of Homeland Security "Fusion Centers"

合作研究：探索国土安全融合中心在美国，国土安全部（DHS）支持创建“融合中心”，以便在政府机构以及公共和私营部门之间共享数据。该合作项目将开始记录和评估融合中心的信息共享实践。具体而言，该研究将重点关注融合中心之间数据共享的变化。研究的问题是（1）什么类型的数据共享正在发生，或由，融合中心？（2）哪些因素影响了融合中心的数据共享实践？使用定性方法，研究将通过对政府和媒体来源的文件分析，在政府主办的安全会议上进行观察性研究，以及对政府机构，私营公司和民间社会组织代表进行至少40次半结构化访谈来进行。该项目的智力价值在于它有助于理解新的组织和技术发展对提供国家安全的影响。这项研究在理论上是有价值的，因为它将有助于学术监督和社会，安全的私有化，和技术系统的政治。除了产生参考文章和会议演示文稿，这项研究将提供一个重要的实证作品，以一个更大的国际项目称为“新的透明度”，这是促进全球安全行业的多国和跨文化的比较。 该项目的更广泛影响包括提高对融合中心的作用、贡献和影响的认识。

Collaborative Research: Exploring Homeland Security Fusion CentersIn the United States, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has supported the creation of 'fusion centers' to share data across government agencies as well as across public and private sectors. This collaborative project will begin to document and evaluate the information sharing practices of fusion centers. Specifically, the research will focus on variations in data sharing across fusion centers. The research questions are (1) What types of data sharing are occurring with, or are enabled by, fusion centers? and (2) What factors contribute to the data-sharing practices of fusion centers? Using qualitative methods, research will be conducted through document analysis of government and media sources, observational studies at government-sponsored security conferences, and a minimum of 40 semi-structured interviews with representatives of government agencies, private companies, and civil society organizations. The intellectual merit of this project is its contribution to an understanding of the implications of new organizational and technological developments for the provision of national security. This study is theoretically valuable because it will contribute to scholarship on surveillance and society, the privatization of security, and the politics of technological systems. In addition to producing refereed articles and conference presentations, this research will provide an important empirical piece to a larger international project called "The New Transparency" which is facilitating multi-national and cross-cultural comparisons of the global security industry. The broader impacts of this project include an increased awareness of the roles, contributions and implications of fusion centers.