The new National Intelligence Estimate has some verbiage that practically screams for more and better integration of intelligence information from a all kinds of local and national sources —“fusion” in spook lingo.
The good news is that the Department of Homeland Security has provided start-up money to create forty new state intelligence fusion centers to do just that. The bad news is that the program apparently sucks. Surprise. Surprise.
Washington Technology has an interesting article about the fusion centers that were established in the wake of 9-11 to track terrorism intelligence. Apparently they’ve actually taken the time to read a congressional report about how homeland security dollars are being spent. I'm sure it was thrilling reading. Key points:
Anti-terrorism information-sharing and analysis is taking a back seat to criminal intelligence at the more than 40
state intelligence fusion centers, according to a new report from the
Congressional Research Service…
*“While many of the centers have prevention of attacks as a high priority, little ‘true fusion,’ or analysis of disparate data sources, identification of intelligence gaps and pro-active collection of intelligence against those gaps, which could contribute to prevention, is occurring,” CRS researchers wrote in the 100-page report, “Fusion Centers:
Issues and Options for Congress.” It was authored by specialists Todd Masse and
John Rollins and analyst Siobhan O’Neil. *
The fusion centers have received $380 million in start-up funding from the Homeland Security Department but many of them do not have future funding secured, according to CRS. Furthermore, the fusion centers may present risks of civil liberties and privacy incursions, and may not be able to demonstrate enough effectiveness without further guidance, the report suggested…
The centers also suffer from a lack of interoperability with other networks and systems. Although the federal government has recommended use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) to improve information-sharing, it is not required, and many centers continue to purchase proprietary information technology equipment and services that hamper their ability to interact with other systems, the report said.
FAS’s Secrecy News Blog has a post on the report as well:
"It is unclear if a single fusion center has successfully adopted a truly proactive prevention approach to information analysis and sharing. No state and its local jurisdictions appear to have fully adopted the intelligence cycle."
In principle, fusion centers represent a conduit
"through which federal intelligence can flow across the country."
But "numerous fusion center officials claim that although their center receives a substantial amount of information from federal agencies, they never seem to get the 'right information' or receive it in an efficient manner," the CRS report stated.
"It could be argued that if information flow into fusion centers is limited, the quality of the information is questionable, and the center doesn't have personnel with the appropriate skill sets to understand the information, then the end result may not provide value."
Gasp! Your tax dollars may not being spent as they should. Paging Captain
Renault, because I'm shocked, shocked to find that wasteful spending is going on here.
Any new program is going to have some growing pains, and as expensive programs go this one isn’t so bad, right? DHS has only invested $380 million so far. Hopefully it will improve with age, right? Right?
Yes, new programs always have growing pains, but after poking around in the report, it appears that this is yet another taxpayer funded boondoggle. Lack of training. Lack of focus. Lack of doctrine. Seems like DHS doesn’t so much write policy as redistribute wealth. It’s like communism without the stupid Che Guevara t-shirts.
But, contrary to the alarmist headline of one of the stories, I’m not so sure that the fusion centers being used for criminal information is all that bad. Terrorism is, after all, crime, and the supporting functions of terrorism are crimes. The threshold between criminal activity and terrorist activity is fuzzy. Somebody steals some explosives from a quarry. Terrorism or bored rednecks? Somebody has to figure that out.
Plus, there might not be that much information about terrorist plots to share. 9-11 would have only been a few blips on the radar—blips that were detected but not acted upon for lack of somebody “fusing” the big picture together. The fusion centers are a start—with a wide margin for improvement.
The thing that really bothers me about the report is database interoperability problem. We’re spending millions on emergency radio interoperability, which was one of the key lessons learned from 9-11. But, our information technology programs are spending a ton of cash to create stove piped systems that can’t talk to each other. That’s folly, and any corporation that did that would suffer the consequences at the hands of its competitors and shareholders. Why doesn’t DHS just step in and create an open standard for these fusion centers to use? I have a “gut” feeling that all those vacant executive positions at DHS has something to do with it.
ALSO:
* Homeland Security Advisor: U.S. Fighting a "Single Determined Enemy"
* Iraq: Who's the Enemy, Really?
* Intelligence Estimate: Snoozeville
* Reading Between the Intel Estimate's Lines
* New Intelligence Estimate Warns of Threat to U.S.
