Fusion centers are part of the 3-year plan for implementing the congressionally mandated Information Sharing Environment (ISE). The ISE is a combination of policy and procedural change in the Federal Government's use of new information technology systems. The core of such a system is fusion centers in States and large municipalities, where terrorist-related information is collected, processed, condensed, and evaluated. One of the challenges that had already arisen pertains to the civil liberties and privacy implications of the seamless sharing of information envisioned by the ISE. Although Federal regulations that govern State and local databases are part of federally funded fusion centers, it is unclear how much oversight of compliance with these regulations will be conducted by the U.S. Justice Department. Because the fusion centers are designed to fuse information from various sources, data governed by many different regulations will enter fusion-center databases. The monitoring of the collection and management of this information will be difficult. Abuses may be difficult to prevent or detect. Fusion centers will both share intelligence information with and receive it from the Federal Government. Another challenge is the criteria that will determine which information is shared with what agencies. The most immediate challenge, however, is determining which data pipelines will connect the centers with each other and with the Federal Government.