Idea of the Week: How to SHARE Intelligence for Homeland Security

DLC | New Dem Daily | December 5, 2003
Idea of the Week: How to SHARE Intelligence for Homeland Security

The inability of U.S. officials to detect and prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 has rightly been called "the worst intelligence failure in American history." But there's another lapse that's steadily climbing up the list of dangerous and avoidable failures: the inability of the Bush administration to fix obvious problems with the national intelligence system in the wake of the attacks. Though the United States leads the world in the development and use of information technology, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies responsible for preventing future terrorist attacks continue to labor away using outdated equipment and systems that are "stovepiped" -- limited to the internal hierarchies of individual agencies, and preventing effective communication, information sharing, and analysis. Busting through bureaucratic barriers to fix this problem requires vision and leadership that have been sorely lacking from the current administration.

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It is against this background of procrastination that the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age -- a bipartisan group of leading intelligence and technology experts, including PPI Vice President Rob Atkinson -- has this week released its second report, recommending the creation of the Systemwide Homeland Analysis and Resource Exchange (SHARE) Network. This new network would be built specifically to eliminate the problems of our current intelligence system. The primary attribute of the SHARE Network is a decentralized structure, which would eliminate "single points of failure" (intelligence limited to one agency) and allow information to flow throughout the network rather than only up and down individual agencies' chains of command. Other important attributes of the new system would be easy searchability across all sets of data, "machine-based" automatic analysis and pattern-matching, "real-time" communication of information, and built-in security to detect any improper uses of or intrusions into the network.

Just as important as the structure of the SHARE Network itself are the recommendations for action by the Bush administration to get the transformation underway. The Task Force calls on President Bush to issue executive orders to implement his vision for a homeland security intelligence system, clarifying how information will be gathered and used, ending the bureaucratic in-fighting and hoarding of information that is holding up the transformation, and setting benchmarks for judging the performance of the agencies involved. The Task Force also recommends that the agencies involved improve their information sharing with state and local law enforcement agencies so the front line protectors can have the tools they need to do their jobs. Taken together, the Task Force report is a call for not only better technology -- simple enough since the system would be based on common commercial standards -- but for better leadership. Without it, the intelligence agencies will continue to plod along in isolation exactly as they were doing on September 10th, 2001.

The best way to protect the homeland from terrorist attacks is not removing shoes at airports or giving hazmat suits to fire departments; it is knowing who the terrorists are and what they are doing before they attack. It is alarming that more than two years after the attacks the administration has done so little to improve our ability to find and track terrorists. The Markle Task Force has provided an excellent blueprint to follow. Now President Bush needs to pay attention to it, and make it a priority.

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=131&subid=207&contentid=252246

So the DLC is on board with this. What's next?

Do I sense the Stephens Group and Axciom behind this little gem?

Just as important as the structure of the SHARE Network itself are the recommendations for action by the Bush administration to get the transformation underway. The Task Force calls on President Bush to issue executive orders to implement his vision for a homeland security intelligence system, clarifying how information will be gathered and used, ending the bureaucratic in-fighting and hoarding of information that is holding up the transformation, and setting benchmarks for judging the performance of the agencies involved.

I am seriously getting worried now because it's so out in the open. It's as if they have the entire thing cornered. I haven't read the report yet but am printing it off for bed-time reading. Markle is frightening!

How much more will we allow them to get away with? This is nothing more than Bush in Dem's clothing!

i am not against intel sharing data they have collected on legitamite suspects that have been identified and signed off on by a real judge but we need to be very concerned about how they aquire data and what safe guards are there to protect against missuse.

i hope they aren't talking about another TIA program.

peace

Surely someone could put together an architecture where information is shared (complete with protocols & procedures, of course.)

It's important, as you said, to keep this issue separate from abuse of the Constitution (as in TIA.) Ashcroft will use anything for an excuse for this.

I wonder why.