Flimsy threat assessments issued by North Dakota fusion center regarding the Standing Rock protests reinforce much of the criticsim that’s been leveled against fusions over the last decade and a half: namely, that fusion centers are not very good at their job, do not produce intelligence which is actionable or particularly useful, and are instead used to gain intelligence about activist groups, and members of the public who are not a crime risk, violating their civil liberties for basically no reason at all.

Customs and Border Protection has a well-earned reputation for being one of the hardest agencies to get records out of. But with their recent rejections of Curtis Waltman’s FOIA requests for contracts, they’ve crossed the line from frustration into absurdity.

459 pages of complaints from the Nevada Division of Insurance (NDOI) related to bail bondsman point to epidemic in the state: bounty hunters in a largely unregulated industry are routinely using that vacuum to line their own pockets or abuse their customers.

A threat assessment by a local fusion center on the Standing Rock protests recently released to MuckRock presents a lopsided view of the conflict, with guards and law enforcement subject to unfair treatment on social media for their use of dogs as “protection,” and retaliatory public shaming for racist Facebook posts about Native Americans.

Behind the scenes, as law enforcement officials tried to stem protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, alumni from the George W. Bush White House were leading a crisis communications effort to discredit pipeline protesters. This revelation comes from documents obtained via an open records request from the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department in Wyoming.