Analysis: State centers will focus intel

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- A new plan from the U.S. intelligence czar will use state police-run intelligence fusion centers as the hubs for a national network of officials from different agencies and levels of government sharing information about terrorism.

In a move likely to rattle privacy mavens, the three year plan for implementing the congressionally mandated Information Sharing Environment, or ISE, also lays out policy designed to ease sharing intelligence with foreign governments, and proposes to widen the definition of terrorism information that can be shared.

The plan "provides a roadmap for the successful implementation of the ISE, and responds to the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission," said Amb. Thomas McNamara, program manager for the ISE in the office of the director of national intelligence.

Enacted as part of the 2004 intelligence reform law, the ISE is in effect a combination of policy and business-process change across the U.S. government with new information technology systems, designed to create a seamless "network of networks" connecting officials -- and the terrorism-related information they have access to -- from the increasing number of federal, state and local agencies whose mission includes protecting the United States from terrorism.

In an interview with United Press International, McNamara said the aim was to create "a virtual interstate system," and that the law enforcement fusion centers being set up in states and large municipalities would be the "nodes where information can be processed, condensed and evaluated."

But the definition of such information encompasses personal data about Americans held by government agencies, and in the wake of revelations that a Pentagon terrorist threat database contained reports about peaceful and lawful anti-war protests, there are continuing questions about the civil liberties and privacy implications of the seamless sharing of information envisaged by the ISE.

John Rollins, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service who formerly worked on information sharing issues at the Department of Homeland Security, told UPI there were some concerns about the regulatory framework within which the fusion centers would operate.

He said there were federal regulations governing state and local databases which were part of federally-funded fusion centers, but it was unclear how much oversight of compliance with the regulations the Justice Department planned to do.

One of the challenges officials have faced in laying out a roadmap for the ISE is the proliferation of overlapping and sometimes contradictory regulations that different federal and other agencies have to protect information security, and the privacy and other rights of Americans.

Justice Department guidelines dictate, for instance, that information about Americans collected by U.S. intelligence agencies should be deleted after 90 days if it has no continuing relevance. Law enforcement information, because it can generally only be collected about people who are suspect to one degree or another in a crime, can be held for longer.

Information about foreigners, like the biometric data collected by the U.S.-VISIT system at ports of entry, is not subject to privacy or other restrictions and the Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it intends to keep those records for 40 years.

Because the fusion centers are designed precisely to fuse information from all these different sources, data governed by many different regulations will find its way onto their databases.

"Who is going to be watching all of that?" asked Rollins.

McNamara argues that the new system will strengthen civil liberties and privacy "if it is done right."

"There already information sharing going on," he said, adding that ISE systems could add oversight capabilities, which would "track, audit and monitor the use of the system" to prevent abuse and ensure security.

His plan sets the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security the task of working with and funding the centers' development, and sets up a high level interagency panel to ensure they all reach "a baseline level of capability" and "comply with all applicable federal laws and policy regarding the protection of information and privacy and other legal rights of individuals."

McNamara's spokesman, John Cohen, said the guidelines and best practices promulgated across the network of new centers had been developed by state and local agencies themselves. "These are state and local owned and operated," he said of the centers, currently operating or being set up in 42 states.

Rollins said there had been some institutional competition between the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security about who should lead federal efforts to share terrorism information with state and local governments and with the private sector, and that there had been a "big push to fund and staff" the centers.

The plan says it will supersede individual departmental approaches to assigning personnel to centers, such as those being developed by homeland security and the FBI.

Cohen said the question was not whether there were officials from one agency rather than another in the centers. "The question is how you best leverage the deployment of federal personnel to support them."

Cohen said the centers would provide information to state and local agencies "to support decision-making both tactical and strategic" on a variety of issues, including terrorist threats, but also "crime prevention ... (and) emergency preparedness and response."

Two contentious areas his plan proposes to push ahead on are the sharing of information with foreign governments and the sharing of information with and from private sector firms.

The plan says that federal departments and agencies should begin to ensure that their so called systems-of-records notices and routine disclosures required by the Privacy Act "provide for terrorism information sharing with foreign partners."

It also calls for the implementation of recommendations on information-sharing with the private sector that are "likely to entail issues requiring executive level decisions or legislative changes."

Rollins called the plan "a good start," but said the "After five years (since Sept. 11, 2001) all we have is a plan ... The real hard work starts now."