techslog

On the seventh floor of a tan, rectangular block building in Norwalk, Calif., behind a locked door, sit rows of cubicles—each one supplied with a PC, a phone that makes voice calls over the Internet, and double flat-panel monitors. In a few cubicles, analysts work intently on the computers. In the others, idle monitors display a silver ring encircling an American flag and a bald eagle flying out of a bell-shaped speaker. Images pour into the room—from a bank of six flat-screen TVs suspended from the ceiling that are tuned to Al Jazeera and five other newscasts; and from the smart boards, giant electronic whiteboards that hang around the walls beneath computers fixed with projectors. They flash air traffic updates, maps of the Los Angeles area, a picture of the Statue of Liberty.

ADVERTISEMENT Since Sept. 11, the government has been trying to collect and share information across geographical and political boundaries to prevent another terrorist attack. This place—the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), near Los Angeles—is the latest plan.

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The idea is that the locals will be able to sift through the bits of information that flow into the center—sightings of suspicious activity reported by corporate security officers or passers-by, criminal histories from the Los Angeles Police Department, news reports—analyze them, and push them back out so the affected agencies can respond quickly if there's a threat. The 9/11 Commission reported hundreds of such missed opportunities before and after 9/11. Two hijackers, for example, were in the State Department's terrorist database, but the FAA didn't use that data—and the hijackers boarded the planes.

Over the years, law enforcement agencies have been hobbled with aging, incompatible computer systems and a culture that rewards competition over cooperation. "There are no greater Type A's than in law enforcement," says Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent now teaching about terrorism and public policy at the University of Southern California. He says the U.S. lags other countries, like the United Kingdom, in information sharing because law enforcement databases here are not connected and terrorism in this country is still a recent concern.

Some projects started in the panic that followed 9/11 have run into problems—legal, technical and political. In 2002, California's Criminal Intelligence Bureau set up a network to exchange information on suspicious activity with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in New York and Washington, D.C. A set of online forums called the Joint Regional Information Exchange System (JRIES), it was based on workspace software from Groove Networks—founded by Ray Ozzie, who created Lotus Notes—and Microsoft.

In 2003, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security took over JRIES, decided to expand it to all 50 states, and renamed it the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). The DHS rushed to deploy the network, and Groove couldn't scale fast enough to handle the surge in users, reports the DHS's Inspector General. In 2005, the DHS took all the agencies it had added to the network off Groove and put them on Web-based portals. But HSIN still isn't used much by anybody—including law enforcement, which dropped out and tried to form its own more secure network, the Inspector General said in a June report. That's because "users are confused and frustrated," without clear guidance on how the network works or whether it can be trusted to handle sensitive information. Instead, they resort to the phone. Microsoft, which now owns Groove, has no comment.

And in Florida, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (Matrix), which let states mine for personal information on suspects across databases maintained by a corporate data broker, Seisint, was shut down in April 2005. The federal government was funding Matrix, but after the American Civil Liberties Union filed several Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit, Florida pulled the plug.

Now there's the Joint Regional Intelligence Center, an idea that started in the LAPD's anti-terrorism unit and won backing from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and the FBI before it was adopted by other agencies in the region. It's taken more than three years to plan and launch. Ultimately, it is supposed to connect agencies across seven Southern California counties—fire departments, public health agencies, port police, airport police and many others—with international law enforcement agencies and local companies, like Disney, that oversee potential targets or important pieces of local infrastructure.

Analysts who work in the center think it's an idea whose time has arrived.

Information technology has advanced since 2001, and the center benefits from that. Newer standards like Global Justice XML, which creates a common language for justice and public safety data; and service-oriented architecture, which exposes that data across different computer systems, make it faster and easier for agencies to share information. Right now, the chief software at the center—Memex, made by Glasgow, Scotland-based Memex Technology—is based on these standards.

Memex is Windows-based collaboration software that collects, manages, secures and disseminates information according to rules set by the participants. At the center, it runs on multiple redundant servers. It searches both structured data (database fields) and unstructured data (free-form notes) and can sort, link or display data visually. Memex also tracks and purges information according to federal law, which restricts the type of criminal intelligence law enforcement agencies are allowed to collect and how long they can keep it on computers.

But technology will not determine whether the center succeeds, says project manager Mario Cruz. It's how the agencies involved in the center work out differences over what information to share and how to share it.

Every tip or lead that passes through Memex and every process that the data goes through—such as who is allowed to see it—have to be looked at, Cruz says, because "you can't just drop information out there and not know where it goes.

"[If I have information], how do I notify you?" he asks. "If I notify you, how do you reply? If information drops, is there a log of that information? Is it accurate? Did any follow-up or investigation result?"

The room housing the center is especially designed for information sharing, says LAPD police chief William Bratton. He points to the waist-high walls between cubicles and the long table bisecting the middle of the room "so people can hang out and talk, so information is diffused."

There's an advantage to having people from so many agencies working here. On July 3, 2005, says Professor Southers, four days before the London subway bombing, a man passing by the Santa Monica pier noticed three men taking videos of the access control system, the police substation and the pier's underside. He photographed them. More than two weeks later on July 21, the day of the second London bombing, he felt nervous and took his photos to the Santa Monica Police Department, which turned them over to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. The FBI had tips that three men were taking videos at the Huntington Beach pier and at a third location. They turned out to be the same people. The men were investigated and found to pose no threat, according to the FBI.

Had the center existed, law enforcement would have figured it out more quickly, Southers says: "Now, everybody involved in the Santa Monica caper sits in the JRIC in the same building."

"[We want to] get plots and plans disrupted across jurisdictions," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said when he visited the center on Aug. 18. "It's existed to a degree in the past, but it's not institutionalized."

The JRIC, one of four regional terrorism threat assessment centers in California, covers the same territory as the FBI's divisions in that state. The idea is to have 38 centers throughout the nation, Chertoff says, although he calls this center "the most adventurous in the country."

During the years it took to plan the center, people representing the LAPD, sheriff's department, FBI and other agencies sat in a room with a whiteboard and imagined how it could work, according to Stanley Salas, an LAPD detective involved since the center's early days. As the idea took shape, he says, the concept of the center changed.

People from agencies serving only part of the Los Angeles area had to learn to think about the whole region, he says. They had to learn to share resources—to justify committing $2 million from city or grant funds to a joint intelligence center without being sure what they'd get out of it. They had to find people within their agencies who could put aside any institutional biases and work with others.

"The people who work here now are interested in analysis and cooperation," Salas says. "They really want this."

In the end, the FBI helped build the center because the federal government had the specifications and knew what to do, Salas explains. The sheriff's department contributed desks, PCs and telephones, and the LAPD (which is also using Memex) provided information-sharing technology, including software and TVs.

Today, center workers use a variety of analytical tools—Google Earth, ESRI's ArcView GIS software, and Microsoft SQL, among others—to sift through information. The network is protected by a double firewall, encryption and the strongest password system, and it discourages human engineering. Nobody can call to get a password changed, Cruz says, and when people leave the center, their network accounts are expunged.

However, no agency can connect electronically to any other agency's network or databases, because agreements to share information are not yet in place. A high-speed T1 line runs between the center and the LAPD's Major Crimes Division, which Cruz calls "a start." That division includes criminal history databases; the Project Archangel database, which tracks the security of high-risk locations such as the US Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles; and an Internet-based regional public-private infrastructure communication system, which Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power use to communicate possible threats to the police.

Within the center, only the LAPD and the sheriff's department have a working agreement, Cruz says, though the highway patrol may be included soon. Cruz is about to roll out a connection to the state Terrorism Threat Assessment Center in the governor's office, which links to agencies throughout California, and he continues to work on more agreements. But some agencies, like the FBI, have more restrictions than others.

Right now, FBI agents work in a separate room off the center, although they are available to the center's staff. But they handle investigations and classified information, and the rest of the center does not. So, while FBI agents can log in to Memex, analysts in the center can't access FBINet, the agency's classified network.

Getting the FBI on the same floor as the rest of the center is a step forward, Cruz says. He also helped plan the center from the beginning, and says he works every day on "teaching the culture to change." For example, 30 analysts at the center are encouraged to use shared drives and shared folders on their PC desktops so others can see what they're working on. This makes some people uncomfortable.

But, Cruz points out, "If you're working on a Middle Eastern man in a blue Chevy and you don't know the guy next to you is doing the same thing, you've wasted a lot of time."

There are other adjustments. Analysts are still learning to use some gadgets. During an open house for their families, children were showing their parents how to work the smart boards, which they use in school. A 7-year-old demonstrated the board's electronic marker by playing a game of tic-tac-toe.

Deputy sheriffs come in to sweep the floor and pick up trash. "We sit at the tables on a daily basis and work out the bugs," Cruz says. "I feel very good about it."

Cruz is now waiting for more people to be hired so he has more time to build agreements on information sharing, especially with international law enforcement. Ultimately the center will be open 24/7. Salas wants Interpol in Europe to join, along with agencies from New South Wales in Australia, and the rest of the Pacific Rim.

At A Glance: JRIC

Headquarters: 12440 E. Imperial Highway, Norwalk, CA 90650
Business: Establish networks and policies for sharing information across agencies in the seven-county Los Angeles area to improve public safety and thwart terrorist attacks.
Technology Chief: Mario Cruz, project manager
Financials: $2 million contribution each from the Los Angeles Police Department, Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and the FBI, plus contributions from the state of California and the Department of Homeland Security.

http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1540,2021980,00.asp