Tech Roundup

Nearly half of federal agencies are not sharing documented incidents of potential terrorist activity with U.S. intelligence centers, according to officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Homeland Security and Justice departments since 2008 have been teaching federal officials and police to deposit, through a secure network, reports of suspicious behavior while being mindful of civil liberties. The point of the technology is to piece together terrorist plots before they are executed.

But, some criminal justice experts say, a major obstacle is dampening the initiative. Work is slow-going in connecting local agencies to fusion centers, intelligence facilities partly funded by the government that vet reports for possible distribution through the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Nearly half—46 percent—of federal departments told ODNI that they were not frequently sharing leads. In a new report to Congress, the Information Sharing Environment, an agency within ODNI, stated that 16 percent of agencies said that they never submit notices, 15 percent reported they rarely file and 15 percent said they sometimes share.

“This is a serious problem because unless we are able to convince all the local agencies to participate and to submit their SARs to the fusion center, we create the very real possibility that we will miss detecting the next Mohammed Atta who goes around taking flying lessons and passing up on the lecture of how to land his aircraft,” says Paul Wormeli, Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute executive director emeritus and a consultant on the project. Atta allegedly hijacked one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. 

Aliya Sternstein

Corporate Crackdown