02Dec03-Laurence Arnold-U.S. Weak in Sharing Terror Information
Tue Dec 2, 5:04 PM ET Add Politics - AP to My Yahoo!
By LAURENCE ARNOLD, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The federal government has only marginally improved how it shares information on terrorists and threats with key people on the national, state and local levels, technology and national security experts asserted Tuesday.
A study by the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age said sharing "remains haphazard and still overly dependent on ... personal relations among known colleagues."
The panel advocates creation of a decentralized information network to spread information about terror threats while safeguarding against violations of civil liberties.
The report proposes construction of an information network to be called the Systemwide Homeland Analysis and Response Exchange, or SHARE. It urges President Bush (news - web sites) to begin the process with an executive order.
"Today's threats require us to collect information on individuals here at home, and we need the ability to share that information through a system that is trusted by the American people," said Zoe Baird, president of the Markle Foundation, a private philanthropic organization.
Baird, a former Justice Department (news - web sites) and White House attorney, directs the task force with James Barksdale, co-founder and former chief executive of Netscape. The panel released an initial report in October 2002 that spelled out its principles for decentralizing and disseminating intelligence information.
The panel includes academics, civil libertarians and national security officials from four presidential administrations. Former Gen. Wesley Clark (news - web sites), who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, is a member. So is Philip Zelikow, executive director of the federal commission studying the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Baird said members of the task force would meet late Tuesday with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and on Wednesday with the CIA (news - web sites) director, George Tenet.
Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department already is working on a new system to share information with state and local authorities.
The task force says the government is moving slowly from its Cold War "need to know" mentality toward a more appropriate "culture of distribution."
The electronic network it envisions would be loosely structured, so information could flow freely. There also would be redundancy, to increase the probability that important information would be acted upon, along with encryption, auditing and access controls to guarantee security.
The organization said such a system would allow an FBI (news - web sites) agent with a hunch to locate other people at the federal, state or local level or in the private sector.
As part of its response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration created a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to bring together information gathered by the CIA, FBI and other agencies.
The Markle task force says there is confusion about the respective roles of the center and Homeland Security Department. And neither entity has put in place "the necessary staff or framework for analyzing information and sharing it broadly," the report says.
Roehrkasse said Homeland Security and the threat center are working well together, "passing on not only threat information, but also recommended security measures, to state and local governments as well as to the private sector."
The report urges President Bush to issue an executive order endorsing a decentralized information network and establishing guidelines for the use of public and private data.
Baird said a clear statement of guidelines from the president could prevent the kind of public backlash that greeted two early attempts at informational counterterrorism: the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s Terrorism Information Awareness research program, and the Transportation Security Agency's Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System.
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