In the News 2008

June 2008

Fusion Centers May Strengthen Emergency Management. Article

May 2008

Secretary Chertoff releases the Department of Homeland Security's Information Sharing Strategy, which provides strategic direction and guidance for all DHS information sharing efforts and supports President Bush's National Strategy for Information Sharing and the broader National Strategy for Homeland Security, both issued in October 2007. DHS Information Sharing Strategy
Nearly seven years after 9/11, information-sharing problems that hobble law enforcement are just beginning to be solved. More...
President orders agencies to simplify data labeling. Article
Secretary Chertoff provides overview of the FY 2008 Infrastructure Protection Activities - information sharing and analysis is highlighted as one of DHS's top priorities this year. Secretary Chertoff's Remarks...
ODNI and DoD Chief Information Officers Embrace Information Sharing Between Interagency Computer Networks. Press Release...
'CUI' standardizes myriad labels for sensitive but unclassified info. Article
Sensitive but unclassified category simplified. The Bush administration has released new standards for how agencies should label sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information to simplify the more than 100 different markings or handling instructions that officials now attach to that data. More...
DHS Touts Intell Advances. Article

April 2008

Feds look to local police department standards for suspicious activity reporting. Article
Since 9/11, authorities have urged local police to become the front line in domestic counter-terrorism, gathering street-level intelligence about crimes and suspicious activities that could foretell another attack. More...
LAPD Terror-Tip Plan May Serve as Model, WSJ. Article Excerpt
LAPD Looks to Uncover Terrorist Plots. Article
DOJ and DHS Officials testify at U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration hearing, "Focus on Fusion Centers: A Progress Report".
Testimony of DOJ Chief Information Officer, Vance Hitch
Testimony of DHS Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis, Jack Tomarchio
DNI Announces Information Sharing Strategy for Intelligence Community. Press Release
TSC Starts New Watchlist Encounter Review Program. Records Of Frequently Encountered Individuals To Be Reviewed Automatically, Even Without Redress Requests. Press Release

March 2008

NYPD officer is first non-federal agent to take place at National Counterterrorism Center. Article
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors votes to accept a $250,000 Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program grant. The funding will be used for the maintenance and support of the San Diego Regional Terrorism Threat Assessment Center. Article
Second National Fusion Center Conference Held to Foster Greater Collaboration. More than 900 federal, state, and local law enforcement and homeland security officials attended this week the National Fusion Center Conference in San Francisco to further the U.S. government's plans to create a seamless network of these centers. More ...
Remarks by Homeland Security Under Secretary for National Protection and Programs Robert Jamison and Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications Greg Garcia at a briefing on Cyber Storm II. Article
Government officials say that state and local law enforcement agencies are moving to strengthen their links with the National Counter Terrorism Center's classified online information repository. Article
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Julie L. Myers announces a law enforcement information sharing service that provides the country's largest border community access to federal database information. Article
If federal employees do not personally adopt a policy of sharing intelligence information, they may soon face a poor performance review, the government's top information-sharing czar warned at an intelligence conference. Article
Ambassador Thomas McNamara, Program Manager Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), testified on March 13, 2008 before the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment. Hearing Agenda Video
Ambassador Thomas McNamara, the country's information sharing chief and program manager for the Director of National Intelligence's Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE), has said the government is at the "end of the beginning" of its efforts to successfully share homeland security and intelligence information, with significant cultural and administrative challenges still ahead. Article
The United States and Germany are working to speed the exchange of information in anti-terror efforts. Washington said it hopes the ground-breaking deal will serve as a model for co-operation with other countries. Article
Local and state police are joining forces in a new way to enhance their lines of communication. On [March 10, 2008], law enforcement leaders announced plans for the recently developed Western Maryland Information Center. The center ... is a combined unit of state, county, municipal and federal law enforcement personnel who will focus on gathering information on crime, criminals and crime trends throughout the region. Article
Colorado law enforcement officials are in the process of implementing COPLINK, a "quantum leap" for police efforts across the state, according to Aurora Police Chief Daniel Oates. COPLINK is commercially developed software that accepts data from multiple police and sheriff's departments and links it seamlessly to give law enforcement a huge boost in getting criminals off the street. Article
Information sharing is the "top imperative" of federal chief information officers ... but progress will be stifled as long as agencies regard information sharing and security as mutually exclusive, said the Pentagon's deputy chief information officer. Article

February 2008

A Connecticut $1.2 million grant connects police agencies in 31 towns. The new system enables law enforcement officers to have immediate access to arrests and incidents in each municipality. Article
Chicago Fusion Center Gives Police New Criminal Investigation Tools and saves lives. Article
Wedged between New York City and Philadelphia, New Jersey is easy to overlook geographically, but law enforcement and intelligence officials can't afford to ignore the densely populated state with its oil refineries, pipelines, power plants and ports that help fuel an entire region. Protecting the Garden State from terrorist and criminal activities is a major challenge. Article
Statement of Charles E. Allen, Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis (Department of Homeland Security). Discusses Intelligence, Information Sharing, and the Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination Group (ITACG). Article

January 2008

A top Homeland Security Department official told the U.S. Conference of Mayors Friday that DHS agents are critical to the success of the "fusion centers" the department is setting up nationwide to coordinate with local law enforcement and public health workers and plan to boost staffing. Article
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released for the first time a set of standards for how state, local and federal law enforcement officials should share information on suspicious activity with potential links to terrorism. Article
The White House soon is expected to issue new rules for how managers should categorize information that is sensitive but unclassified. The new policy will put an end to the 100-plus categories that agencies now use to label unclassified information ... In their place will be one broad category called controlled unclassified information, or CUI. Article
The first Counter Terrorism Fusion Center is officially open in Las Vegas. The information collected is shared between federal, state, and local authorities to prevent terrorism or other crimes. It has already proved successful in identifying men with ties to al Qaida. Article
The Homeland Security Department is consolidating more than 100 aging Web portals, including the network that state and local authorities use to share information related to terrorism. Officials said they hope to merge the portals into one enterprise collaboration and SBU portal environment, which will improve the department's ability to share. Article
The Homeland Security Department announced Wednesday that it had appointed a new assistant secretary to serve as a liaison between state and local law enforcement and DHS policy makers - a new position in the policy directorate. Article
BRITISH security agencies have been in talks with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation over plans for a global database of major criminals and suspected terrorists. Article
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued three new metadata standards to improve and simplify the marking and handling of information. These standards are a part of a broader attempt by ODNI and the Department of Defense (DoD) to make information more usable across the intelligence community. All three data standards will use the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and the implementation profiles are specific to file formats such as Extensible Markup Language or HTML. Article
The National Information Exchange Model has gotten its first upgrade. Version 2 should be released by the end of January 2008. "There are literally thousands of changes. It's a major extension," said Paul Wormeli, executive director of the Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute, a Justice Department-funded nonprofit that supports the NIEM program management office. The large Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema provides a common language for federal, state and local agencies to share information on natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other crises. Article
The NIEM initiative is a partnership between the Justice and Homeland Security departments to develop information exchange standards for law enforcement agencies across state and federal agencies. Systems that deploy the National Information Exchange Model will now be able to use a classification schema heretofore unavailable for public use, according to NIEM administrators. Article