WASHINGTON, March 6 (UPI) -- How information technology can better serve national security is the focus of a new initiative funded by the Markle Foundation.
The Task Force on National Security in the Information Age is envisioned as an independent effort to determine how information can be better collected and shared by law enforcement agencies at both the state and federal level, while still protecting individual privacy. It's co-chaired by Zoe Baird, Markle Foundation president, and James Barksdale, former Netscape Communications chairman. The Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies are also involved.
The United States has long needed to develop a framework to determine how information is collected, Baird told United Press International. Markle is a private, nonprofit communications advocacy group that also gives grants for work in the field.
"We need to figure out how law enforcement needs to contribute, what federal agencies need to contribute, what the private sector has to contribute, and build a whole approach to national security," said Baird.
Any such approach, she added, must address the debate over increased public security vs. individual privacy.
Improved data collection and data sharing have become a top public policy question following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It is especially important because some of the suicide hijackers who participated in the attacks were not arrested by police when questioned about other crimes, or denied visa entry into the United States despite questionable backgrounds and records with some federal law enforcement agencies.
Blame for this has been placed on the poor data sharing between law enforcement agencies and the subsequent failure to get critical information to officers dealing with suspects at street level. Privacy advocates contend, however, that any changes in policies that control data collection and sharing need not violate individual privacy.
Over the next year, the task force is charged with investigating the potential realignment of government agencies to reflect these needs, and the role of the private sector in this effort. The goal is to produce broad recommendations about the best technologies available to facilitate more effective data collection and interagency sharing, while respecting individual privacy.
Task force members affiliated with think tanks include Michael H. Armacost, president of the Brookings Institution; John Hamre, president of CSIS; Abraham Sofaer, senior fellow and government and law analyst at the Hoover Institution; and Robert Atkinson, vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Participants from government, business, law, advocacy groups and academia include Jerry Berman, executive director of the Center for Democracy & Technology; John Gage, chief researcher at Sun Microsystems; Robert Kimmit, executive vice president of global and strategic policy at AOL Time Warner; David Farber, professor of telecommunication systems at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering; financial services and privacy lawyer Paul Schott Stevens; and Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt.
