Take a deep dive into fusion centers, including BRIC, and how to fight back:
Hear from experts and impacted people on how BRIC functions and how it harms community:
What’s At Stake
The Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) threatens the safety and privacy of Black, immigrant, and Muslim communities through its gang database, inescapable surveillance camera system, and its collusion with other police and government agencies. The BRIC has vastly expanded racial and religious profiling by criminalizing the everyday behaviors of Black and Brown people, creating more pathways for deportation, incarceration, and police violence.
The History
Though the BRIC and gang databases are relatively new, their tactics for targeting marginalized communities are not. With its many covert surveillance and intelligence systems, the BRIC is an expansion of the American gang policing system that has historically targeted the Black Power Movement and other BIPOC-led movements and communities. One earlier example of this type of surveillance is the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a series of racist projects aimed at disrupting groups fighting for Black power and other activist organizations, formally spanning from 1956 to 1971. After President Bush’s announcement of The War on Terror in 2001, American police, military, security contractors, and think tanks found new ways to surveil, criminalize, and police Muslims—knowing that under the guise of “counterterrorism,” anything goes. The “War on Terror” and the “War on Gangs” both use similar tactics of surveillance and policing to harass, criminalize, and incarcerate. War on Terror policies like the Patriot Act of 2001 and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have vastly expanded the policing of Muslims and other communities deemed “suspect” while violating our basic civil liberties.
What is a fusion center?
Fusion centers are surveillance institutions created in the post-9/11 expansion of national security, designed to increase the amount of personal information available to law enforcement and government agencies, and to ensure that information is shared across local, state, and national agencies. Fusion centers are independent regional, state, or local agencies that generally receive funding through the city, state, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). As part of the post-9/11 expansion of Islamophobia policy that targeted Muslims, fusion centers were initially designed to focus specifically on “counter-terrorism” efforts. Though twenty years after 9/11, fusion centers have become notorious nationally for the invasive surveillance of Black, Muslim, and immigrant communities as well as leftist movements through a web of high-tech surveillance, data sharing contracts, and in-person monitoring. A 2012 bipartisan Congressional report found that fusion centers nationally were ineffective at preventing terrorism, cost taxpayers millions of dollars in federal funding, and often threatened residents’ civil liberties and Privacy Act protections.
What is the BRIC?
Established in 2005, the BRIC is an example of a fusion center. The BRIC exists to collect and share information about people, particularly Black and brown people, in the Boston metro area. By accumulating vast amounts of personal information through surveillance technology like security cameras, police reports and corporate databases, including utility companies, the BRIC then shares that information with law enforcement and government agencies (such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE), as well as institutions including the Boston Housing Authority, University police, and MBTA transit police.
How does the BRIC work?
The BRIC operates across the Metro Boston Homeland Security Region: Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere, Somerville, and Winthrop. The BRIC is managed by the Boston Police Department but includes federal, state, and other cities’ law enforcement. The BRIC evades public accountability and oversight by keeping its budget, staff, and much of its operations under a veil of secrecy. In addition to the gang database, the BRIC runs the Real Time Crime Center where officers analyze video footage monitoring civilians 24/7 through street cameras. An ACLU analysis of BRIC expense reports found that the Center spent almost $1.3 million on surveillance hardware and software between 2017 and 2020. This includes purchases of concealed surveillance technology, including devices to hide cameras in vacuum cleaners, wires, and tissue boxes.
What is the gang database?
One particularly harmful branch of the BRIC is the gang database, which profiles Black and brown people in Boston based on racist indicators used to determine gang membership. These indicators include wearing various sports teams logos, having tattoos, being a victim of violence, or being seen with someone who is on the database. The BPD uses a “10-point verification system” to deem individuals “gang associates” (6-9 points) or “gang members” (10 points). 97.7% of people in the database are people of color, and more than 75% of the people in the database are Black men or teens. Despite Boston and many neighboring cities being labelled “sanctuary cities,” information from the gang database is shared with law enforcement agencies, including ICE. BPD has offered surface-level reforms to the database, including removing people who are “inactive” and publicly reporting the number of people added to or removed from the list every year.
How do you get on/off the database?
The pathway for getting off the gang database is nearly impossible, and, even if successful, being added at all has severe consequences on immigration status, housing access, job access, and civil liberties. People are not notified by the BRIC when they are added to the database. The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice shares, “If you’re a young Black person wearing a red hat, talking to your cousin while standing in your neighborhood, police may designate you an associate of the Bloods gang. That would never happen in a different neighborhood or to a young white person.” Often, people find out they are on the database after they suffer consequences from another institution or law enforcement agency, like their immigration status being under threat.
What happens if you’re in the database?
Law enforcement agencies have easy access to the gang database; therefore, if someone is reported to law enforcement for a low-level infraction, their level of criminality may be quickly elevated due to their inclusion in the database and the label of “gang member.” This label can lead to detention, deportation, and/or incarceration.
What is the Real Time Crime Center?
The Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) is staffed by police analysts who monitor real-time video from at least a thousand surveillance cameras around the Boston-Metro area, radio communications, and alerts from the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter (a company that installs sensors throughout neighborhoods in order to listen for and locate suspected gunfire). RTCC analysts also tap into automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to track and get real-time alerts on the locations of vehicles. Both ShotSpotter and license plate reading technology are ineffective and threaten community members’ privacy, safety, and security. RTCC analysts also have access to information from a variety of databases, images from Transportation Department cameras, as well as social media feeds.
Why is the RTTC harmful?
The RTCC is based on the unfounded claim that centralizing information and constantly monitoring communities will help law enforcement respond to “criminal activity” more efficiently. The BRIC operates various digital surveillance programs through the RTCC, and was recently exposed for running a social media monitoring campaign targeting Muslims using #Ummah (community), other common Islamic terms, and #BlackLivesMatter. In 2016, BRIC used social media surveillance to target Boston Public School student organizers protesting budget cuts. The BRIC consistently evades public accountability and city-council oversight, yet has access to powerful surveillance databases like Accurint and CLEAR which give them residential, financial, communication, and familial data on people across the country. Law enforcement have intentionally crafted a narrative that if people have “nothing to hide,” then constantly being watched should not be a problem. However, the real-life impact of RTCCs is that BIPOC communities are unfairly targeted by this discriminatory level of scrutiny and criminalized due to racist metrics of legality. Ultimately, this level of unseen surveillance leads to community members feeling unsafe in their own homes and heightens the risk of being incarcerated, detained, or deported.
Take the story of an East Boston High School student, Orlando. A School Resource Officer reported Orlando after a cafeteria fight at school, after which he was added to the BRIC as a verified gang associate. That information was shared with ICE, and after more than a year in immigration detention, Orlando was deported.
Our Wins
In April 2021, the city of Boston released a request for proposals (RFP) to expand surveillance throughout the area, including linking all cameras funded by DHS. Acting Mayor Janey eventually withdrew this proposal after advocacy from the ACLU and MJL. In July 2021, a grant for $850,000 to hire six new analysts for the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) was rejected in June 2021 in a Boston city council meeting (Denied Funding to BRIC). This was a direct result of the campaign led by MJL and supported by many organizations and community members to abolish BRIC.
Our Solutions
Boston cannot truly be a “sanctuary city” while conducting this type of surveillance and using information to criminalize people, rather than making communities feel safe and providing them with resources they may need. The BRIC has a history of First Amendment violations, has threatened local immigrant students with deportation, and has been found to be ineffective in preventing violence in a 2012 bipartisan Congressional report. To achieve real public safety for all of our residents we must invest in public services and:
Learn More
Historical Background
The Terror Trap: The Impact of the War on Terror on Muslim Communities Since 9/11
Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths
COINTELPRO: More About FBI Spying
Resources on fusion centers
The Silicon Hills Have Eyes: How ARIC Fusion Center Surveillance Makes Austin Less Safe
BRIC General Overview
Break Up with the BRIC: Unpacking the Boston Regional Intelligence Center Budget
Gang Database
Here’s What We Know About Boston Police’s Gang Database
Gang database made up mostly of young Black, Latino men
Are there really 160 gangs in Boston?
Social Media Monitoring
Social Media Monitoring in Boston: Free Speech in the Crosshairs
Boston Police Used Social Media Surveillance for Years Without Informing City Council
Relation to Defund Campaigns