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U.S. agencies still don't share info well

WASHINGTON, July 19 (UPI) -- U.S. officials said Tuesday the U.S. intelligence community was grappling with policies to effectively share information.

The U.S. government is also trying to define agencies' counter-terrorism responsibilities, National Journal's Technology Daily reported Tuesday.

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Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, said he was not satisfied with progress on reforming national intelligence capabilities to counter threats.

"The process is painfully slow," Simmons said at an annual conference on information sharing and homeland security in Washington. "I'm very, very frustrated by it."

The U.S. Congress mandated modernization through a 2004 intelligence law, which created a director of national intelligence position and a counter-terrorism center to coordinate intelligence activities and disseminate information. Simmons said Congress should not mandate more changes. Rather, he said the administration must offer solutions. "The last thing you really want to do, in my opinion, is have Congress solve the problem," he said.

Russ Travers, the counter-terrorism center's deputy director for information sharing and knowledge development, said the "single-biggest question" that needs answering is what is each agency's specific responsibility.

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He said the center was "clearly not there yet" on fully implementing the intelligence statute. For example, the center does not have standards for evaluating and incorporating suspicious activity reports created by state and local law enforcement.

Travers said the U.S. intelligence community faced an "extraordinarily complicated environment" with the rise of terrorist groups around the world. Travers said the community's tasks were further challenged by the threat of home-grown terrorist cells, such as the ones that bombed transit systems in Madrid, Spain, in 2004 and London last year, Technology Daily said.

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