''Fusion centers'' are a means of bringing together
information from distributed sources for the purpose of collection, retention,
analysis,
and dissemination.
The term "fusion center," seems to have originated
from the Department of Defense (DOD,) and refers to the fusing
of
information
for analysis
purposes.
On November
9, 2002,
the
New York Times disclosed a massive DOD fusion center
project
managed
by the
Defense
Advanced Research
Project
Agency
(DARPA) known as Total
Information Awareness (TIA). DARPA was developing a
tracking system intended to attempt to detect terrorists through
analyzing troves of information.