Briefs

Oct. 22, 2003. A consortium of Alaskan law enforcement agencies today announced a new information sharing initiative that uses the commercially-available Coplink system to analyze disparate pieces of data for investigative leads.

Seven agencies, including the Alaska Department of Safety and the Juneau and Anchorage police departments, participate in the Alaska Law Enforcement Information Sharing System (ALEISS). The organization will get federal funding for the first phase of the Coplink initiative.

The state, along with the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center -- Northwest -- part of the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice and based in Anchorage -- will administer the funds. As part of the effort, agencies will establish privacy, security and responsibility protocols for using the system.

Coplink, created in 1998 at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona at Tucson, can churn through vast quantities of unstructured information from various databases -- such as sex offender, gang-related, mug shots, records management system, court citations, tax records, and even pawn broker records -- to detect trends.

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