IT improvements big part of Obama's call for better security

Technology solutions being considered to improve security include increasing the number of full-body scanners at airports from 40 to more than 340. TSA

President Obama instructed intelligence and homeland security agencies to enhance their information technology practices, including screening procedures and database analysis, to improve security and curb terrorist threats.

Based on the results of interagency reviews , Obama released a list of corrective actions to address "inherent systemic weaknesses and human errors" that led to the attempted in flight bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.

Many of the actions involve improving the technologies used to screen passengers for dangerous substances before boarding flights, and to track terrorists and their activities in national databases.

"[The corrective actions] also are required to ensure that the standards, practices and business processes that have been in place since the aftermath of 9/11 are appropriately robust to address the evolving terrorist threat facing our nation in coming years," Obama stated in the White House directive.

Among the items, the State Department will review steps for issuing and revoking visas and look into technologies that can improve the process. The Homeland Security Department will investigate screening technologies, especially for the transportation sector, and work to strengthen international partnerships and coordination for aviation security.

"We will establish a partnership on aviation screening technology between DHS and the Energy Department and its national laboratories," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano during a press conference on Thursday. "This will allow government to use the expertise that the national labs have to develop new and more effective technologies, so that we can react not only to known threats, but also to proactively anticipate new ways by which terrorists could seek to board our aircraft."

Napolitano also said the department plans to increase the number of advanced full-body imaging systems that can detect explosives. DHS currently uses 40 such machines nationwide and plans to increase that number to 340 or more. Privacy groups have criticized the systems as too intrusive because they create images of passengers' bodies.

The memo also instructed various intelligence and law enforcement agencies to improve their management of data relating to known and suspected terrorist activities. "As the president has said, this was not a failure to collect or share intelligence," said John Brennan, assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security. "It was a failure to connect and integrate and understand the intelligence we had. The intelligence fell through the cracks . . . in more than one organization.

"This in turn fed into shortcomings in the watch list system, both human and technological," added Brennan, whom Obama designated as the White House official responsible for ensuring agencies make progress in meeting the directive's requirements. "And while the watch list system is not broken, how the intelligence community feeds information into that system clearly needs to be strengthened."

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will work on IT capabilities to improve how agencies discover significant intelligence, integrate various databases so searches can access them, and correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence. The CIA will strengthen procedures related to how watch list information is entered, reviewed, searched, analyzed and acted on. The National Counterterrorism Center will establish a process to prioritize and pursue terrorism threats, including identifying appropriate follow-up action, as well as a dedicated capability for enhancing database record information on possible terrorists for watch list purposes.

The directive did not set a deadline for meeting the requirements, but Brennan will provide monthly updates to Obama.