Existing technologies could bridge information gaps

The intelligence and law enforcement communities could use existing technologies to bridge information gaps scrutinized after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, several government and industry experts said Tuesday. However, implementing those technologies will not be a quick or easy task, they noted.

"The technology is there," said Maj. Ronald Moore, an information security specialist in the Air Force Reserve who has been on active duty since the attacks. "Have all the tools been adapted by the agencies? No."

Speaking at a conference sponsored by the Council of Security and Strategic Technology Organizations, Moore said intelligence agencies have a "basic infrastructure" in place to link their internal systems and share information with their law enforcement counterparts at the federal, state and local levels. "It's just a matter of turning it on and making it happen," Moore said. "But that's easier said than done."

Dan Wagner, dean of the CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, said human factors-including differences in the agencies' cultures and processes-will make information sharing a complex and difficult task. "The scale of this is just crushing," Wagner said. "It's not going to happen overnight."

Wagner said one roadblock to effective intelligence sharing is a lack of integration throughout the CIA's internal systems. "Our data, frankly, are quickly lost and are hard to retrieve," he said.

Another problem for the CIA, Wagner said, is that many intelligence analysts have at least two computer terminals at their desks-one for processing classified information, and the other for accessing the Internet and other unclassified information sources.

"That complicates the process of coming up with information management tools," Wagner said, explaining that analysts need better ways to sift through classified and unclassified networks simultaneously. "We need intuitive tools with a very simple, common interface."

Moore said the intelligence and law enforcement communities also need a "consolidated database" for exchanging information about potential terrorist threats. But he said creating one would be a "major challenge," in part because the two communities have been reluctant to share information with each other.

Noting a "crime fighter vs. war fighter mentality," Moore said law enforcement officials typically fear that exchanging information could compromise a criminal case, while intelligence officials worry about compromising confidential sources.

Moore said the 2001 anti-terrorism law commonly known as the USA PATRIOT Act removed some of those cultural roadblocks, but "underlying obstacles to information sharing still exist" among intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

George Friedman, founder and chief technology officer of Infraworks, said addressing those obstacles probably would require policymakers to make some fundamental decisions about how the agencies can work together to combat terrorism.

"If [terrorism] is a crime, we handle the information one way, but if it's an act of war, we handle information in another way," Friedman said. "The challenge is really to our legal profession and our lawmakers who have tried to put this [dilemma] into a bucket that's familiar to them, and it doesn't fit."