State law enforcement agencies call for national information sharing network

Story updated Friday, April 3, 2009.

The Homeland Security Department must do more to coordinate and fund a national data sharing network that allows states to communicate and exchange information collected on terrorist and crime activities, officials from state and local law enforcement and intelligence agencies told the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment on Wednesday.

Fusion centers, which almost every state has created, should be able to more easily share with one another the information on terrorist threats they collect from diverse sources such as criminal investigations, media reports and tips from the public, said officials from centers in Los Angeles, Iowa and Texas. While centers consolidate data to identify potential threats in their area and share information with DHS, they don't have any means of collaborating with other centers nationwide to identify trends or to plan a more comprehensive response to far-reaching threats.

"We need to do more and look at this from a standpoint of partnering," said Leroy Baca, sheriff of Los Angeles County, who represented the Joint Regional Intelligence Center there. The facility has been credited as a model for other state fusion centers to emulate.

"Communication laterally through the thousands of police agents, which constitute a web of safety for America, is an imminent unmet need," Baca said. "Fusion centers should be a coordinating unit for all police departments."

Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center, said a key ingredient in that objective is the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, which was developed in 2005 by the Justice Department in cooperation with local, state and tribal law enforcement officials. The plan outlines steps that any law enforcement agency can take to advance intelligence sharing. But the vision behind the plan and its recommendations requires funding.

"Fusion centers need to have sustainable funding from the fed government," Baca said. "We can't do this on local dollars alone."

John Bateman, assistant commander of the Bureau of Information Analysis in the Texas Department of Public Safety said fusion centers in Texas reported that their continued viability requires federal funding. The state has separate centers for identifying criminal and terrorism patterns, and for centralizing information related to crime along the Texas-Mexico border. Joint Operations Intelligence Centers in each of the state's six border security sectors also focus on border security.

"Certainly this effort has to be done in a pluralistic way," Porter said, noting that federal, state, local and tribal communities should share information and, by the same token, share the associated expense. "We'd like to have situational awareness on a national level."

State and local representatives voiced similar concerns to the subcommittee at a September 2008 hearing, and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano indicated at a February hearing that the exchange of information with state and local governments was a priority for the department.

Speaking at the National Fusion Center Conference in Kansas City, Mo., on March 11, Napolitano said, "We have to make sure that through the fusion centers, we have created a kind of seamless network of information sharing, not just vertically but also horizontally across the country at different levels." She noted that the department installed the classified Homeland Secure Data Network for DHS agencies, the intelligence community and federal law enforcement at nearly 30 fusion centers nationwide, and provided $327 million in funding to fusion centers and $812 million for broader information-sharing initiatives.

"The sharing of intelligence done right is the tip of the spear in combating terrorist attacks and the kind of violence we're now seeing along the southwest border," said subcommittee chairwoman Jane Harman, D-Calif. "It won't be a bureaucrat in Washington that will thwart the next terrorist attack; it will be a cop on her beat. Fusion centers are the tool to empower that cop to know what to look for and what to do. But steps need to be taken to do this right."

Nextgov incorrectly attributed a quote to John Bateman, assistant commander of the Bureau of Information Analysis in the Texas Department of Public Safety. The statement was actually made by Russell Porter, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center.