Information Sharing Among Intelligence Agencies

The Need for Information Sharing

The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, drew increased attention to the country’s intelligence forces. Much of the focus has been on the intelligence forces’ ability, or lack thereof, to gather sufficient intelligence to predict and avert such assaults. Even if intelligence services could gather enough accurate evidence to predict an attack, effective prevention would be difficult without good cooperation and information sharing. In recognition of this, the government may have financed the creation of fusion centers.

The Creation of Fusion Centers

Fusion centers were created between 2003 and 2007 by the U.S Department of Homeland Security and the Office of Justice Programs, both under the Department of Justice. They are defined as collaborative efforts between two or more agencies that facilitate the sharing of resources, information, and expertise with the aim of detecting, preventing, and responding to criminal and terrorist activity. However, despite such extended efforts to ensure information sharing within the US Intelligence Community, interagency information sharing still faces many obstacles that hinder the effective provision of security to the American people. This paper posits that the main obstacles to interagency cooperation are technology and shaky relationships between different intelligence organizations. The main challenge is experienced in the sharing of information by federal agencies with state and local agencies. If these are not adequately addressed, security provision will always be problematic.

Barriers to Interagency Intelligence Sharing

After the September 11th terrorist attack, there were increased attempts in the American legislature to make policy changes to ensure better protection of the American people. The first of these was the introduction of the USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001, which was meant to ensure the provision of the appropriate tools to ensure the interception and obstruction of terrorist activity within the United States.

Changes were also made to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court), which oversees the requests for surveillance against suspected terrorists within the United States. While these changes in policy made it easier for the sharing of intelligence and information between different agencies in the Intelligence Community, there are still many obstacles to such cooperation. Key among these is the organizational cultures and established practices within the organizations. It has been noted that intelligence personnel find it difficult to share information among themselves, leave alone with outsiders. The importance of protecting sources and methods of information collection makes it difficult for information sharing among intelligence officials and between intelligence organizations.

Mechanisms for Information Sharing

Another major obstacle to information sharing is a lack of a well-defined mechanism for the same among intelligence agencies. This creates a wait-and-see scenario as officials and agencies ponder whether the responsibility for information sharing lies with the entire organization or whether it is an individual responsibility. Different agencies also use different information technology systems, making it difficult to share information. Even when the sharing of such information has been facilitated, it is difficult for different agencies to access each other’s systems if the systems are fundamentally different. Rather than the entire intelligence community having a single major database with a robust search capacity, there exist over fifty different small databases for the different agencies, all of which have differing underlying information technology systems and therefore varying degrees of sophistication. This effectively hinders interagency information sharing and makes the process strictly based on personal interactions between different intelligence personnel. It also makes it necessary for the agencies and agents to meet physically or have a specific physical location where such information sharing can happen. It is under this backdrop that the fusion centers, as well as the National Counter Terrorism Center, were established in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack.

Legal and Policy Issues

Another major limiting factor for information sharing, even after the establishment of such centers, is the legal, policy, and technical issues as well as the privacy, security, and civil protection factors that hinder the collection and sharing of information among agents and between organizations. This also affects the level of information sharing between federal and state or local security forces, as some information is considered classified and cannot be shared downwards. This is a great impediment to the provision of security as the local and state intelligence officers are often in a better position to tackle threats within their localities than the federal agents who hold most of the information.

While the PATRIOT Act did address some of the legal barriers to sharing information between intelligence agencies, and the amendments to the FISA Court also addressed some of the legal barriers to collecting and sharing personal data and information on private individuals considered persons of interest in crime and terrorism anticipation investigations, significant obstacles still remain. Incompatible and firewalled information technologies, as well as differing organizational cultures within the intelligence agencies, still serve as impediments to the effective protection of citizens from determined terrorists and criminals. Some laws, such as the National Security Act, prevent the Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) from carrying out operations within the country. This may hinder them from sharing pertinent information with federal law enforcement officials and agencies. The Posse Comitatus Act may prevent the military from sharing information with domestic authorities. The Privacy Act of 1974 may prevent agencies from sharing private individual information with other agencies, even when such information is necessary for preventing crime and terrorism.

Conclusion and Recommendations

To conclude, although the government has made efforts to ensure that there is effective information sharing between organizations within the intelligence community, plenty still needs to be done to ensure that this is done effectively to enable proper anticipation and response to crime and terrorism.

Some of the measures that can be taken to ensure that this is achieved include sending more Deployed Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers to the fusion centers. The input of such officers has been hailed as more effective in intelligence sharing than providing access to federal information systems. The reason for this is that the kind of information shared by personnel is more customized and easier to apply to situations than that contained in the information systems.

Another step to enhance intelligence sharing would be introducing more fusion centers at the local level, as this would allow local and state authorities to access and share information with federal officials within their jurisdiction. It would also be of great help to restructure the fusion centers to be concerned with information sharing, rather than strictly basing them on sharing of resources as is the case currently. The intelligence community must invest in creating more collaborative and open working environments as well as tailoring intelligence for state and local partners to do away with the barriers and restrictions to information sharing. These measures would go a long way in ensuring that the proper security instruments have access to the appropriate information to ensure public protection and security.

Bibliography

Gardner, Jeffrey. “A Duty To Share: The Opportunities And Obstacles Of Federal Counterterrorism Intelligence Sharing With Nonfederal Fusion Centers”. Doctoral, Walden University, 2017.

Hall, Thad E. “Changes In Legislature After September 11”. Legislative Studies Quarterly 27, no. 1 (2015): 107.

McGuirk, Pauline M., Phillip M. O’Neill, and Kathleen J. Mee. “Effective Practices For Interagency Data Sharing: Insights From Collaborative Research In A Regional Intervention”. Australian Journal of Public Administration 74, no. 2 (2015): 199-211.

Monahan, Torin, and Neal A. Palmer. “The Emerging Politics Of DHS Fusion Centers”. Security Dialogue 40, no. 6 (2009): 617-636.