Briefs

Washington Technology home, 09/18/06; Vol. 21 No. 18, By Alice Lipowicz

Call it fusion as new tools expand hunt for terrorists

New software is making it easier for police at a recently opened intelligence fusion center in Los Angeles to investigate terrorist networks. It could be a success for counter-terrorism, information-sharing and data mining on the local level, though similar efforts have had a rocky path on the federal level.

The Los Angeles Joint Regional Intelligence Center opened in July with new software that lets officers do much more powerful searches, looking across multiple databases in a region for criminals and terrorists.

For example, an officer can run one search to get all reports of suspicious activity at public water plants in all Los Angeles County cities and towns, and all recent arrests and traffic citations in those jurisdictions for people named in those reports.

Previously, it would have required multiple searches to get the same information. �We can now do what everyone calls �connecting the dots,� � said Lt. Robert Fox, co-program manager for the intelligence center, a joint project of the city police, county sheriff, FBI and Homeland Security Department. The new analysis tools, developed by Memex Inc., could reveal a pattern that would require further investigation, he said.

Los Angeles is not alone in relying on newly developed data-mining tools to bolster intelligence operations. Other state and city fusion centers are installing similar software.

There is a caveat, however: the software often is not officially termed �data mining� because of privacy controversies associated with the label.

�Data mining is politically volatile,� said Drew Ladner, a member of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, and general manager of the JBoss division of Red Hat Inc., an open-source software company.

Nonetheless, state and local centers are enhancing their intelligence fusion capabilities apparently without encountering the red tape, turf battles and privacy concerns that have caused similar federal programs to falter.

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