Integration Has Been The Vanguard Initiative Of The Director Of National Intelligence

Homeland Security is characterized by crime control being the primary police function. It is best achieved through a collective effort by all law enforcement agencies. One of the strategies being used is Intelligence Led Policing. This strategy is not new, it can be traced back to the British is the 1990’s (Bailey, 2011). Intelligence Led Policing is an approach to crime that deals with all crimes and threats including terrorism. This approach is unique because it is threat driven instead of incident driven. It also is a long term approach and focuses on causes and conditions that add to crime through a collection of data.

Throughout its more than hundred year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigations has been a very important agency to the United States. As a threat-based and intelligence-driven national security organization, the mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership to federal, state, and international agencies (“A Brief History of the FBI”). The Bureau’s success has always depended on its agility, its willingness to adapt, and the ongoing dedication of its personnel. But in the years since

Since 9/11, the intelligence community has improved greatly. It is not that they have been reconstructed from the ground up, or that their mission has completely changed, it is, in the community’s eye anyway, that they now all share information, no matter how important or how small. This information sharing now even includes all the way down to local and tribal authorities. The reasoning is that, even if it might be small or seem insignificant to you at your level, it may be the piece someone somewhere else in the country needs.

In the State of New York, fusion center is a perfect example of information technology optimizing their performance in reducing crime within their police departments. The New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Center serves as an information hub for law enforcement. According to (Johnson, 2008), the mass of intelligence data in the central location has proved to be a key factor in identifying individuals and organizations that are facilitating or carrying out terrorist activity in New York City.

The 9/11 commission clearly identified a problem with communication between the Intelligence Community and State and Local Law Enforcement which resulted in a new edict (from the IRTPA) of Information Sharing yet clearance levels and accesses quickly became an issue in disseminating information to those with a need to know. To help bridge this gap, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was passed to crate the DHS by bringing 22 under its umbrella with a primary mission of protecting the homeland from terrorism (Blum, 2010). To do so, DHS’s key mission is to collect, analyze, and disseminate key/related information and share it with the IC and nontraditional partners (state/local governments as well as the private sector) (Blum, 2010). Likewise,

This proposal assured that the FBI retains its capability to assimilate national security investigative and intelligence activities while enduring benefit of our widespread organization of conglomerates, including our 800,000 members of law enforcement. The idea was to combine our national security personnel and task under the apparent of a cohesive governance, refining our immersion in intelligence exertions on a national level and offers us with the chance to influence resources from our U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) partners, as well as all groups of law enforcement. Within this brief period of time, the FBI has made huge strides in meeting the requirements necessary of the IRTPA as well as other expectations pushed on the Bureau. As leadership and ability are provided by the IRTPA, the FBI has been able to sufficiently improve our nation’s aptitude to defend itself and counter-balance the most precarious extortions towards our country

Perhaps the most important change in how the federal government was reorganized after September 11th is the creation of both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2004 with the passage of the same IRTPA that created TSA. This concept had been first suggested in 1955 after a study by Congress then and was recommended time and again but only became a reality after the September 11th attacks drove the need for major intelligence reform home and the 9/11 Commission continued the push for the creation of such a position (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-5). As one can see from the mission and vision of the ODNI, the importance cannot be overstated. The mission includes leading intelligence integration while having the IC produce the most insightful intelligence products possible and the vision is fully integrating the IC thus making the nation more secure (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-2).

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks was among the agencies that associated the 9/11 attacks with lack of coordination among agencies (Best, 2015). This prompted the Congress to enact a legislation that established a centralized intelligence leadership, popular as the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). However, the legislation only helped to increase tension between different agencies, especially on how to approach funding. The legislation was not clear regarding the boundaries between the activities of the DNI, and their interaction with the mainstream intelligence agencies. The congress debated these concerns and later established the framework for the working of the DNI and relationship with different intelligence agencies. Most importantly, this legislation focused on one element of reorganization, which was enhancing coordination of activities between different

The only way to have an effective homeland security operation is to ensure all of the supporting activities work together or share information. Preventing terrorism requires sharing of information and intelligence in every way possible. Police attention to terrorism and homeland security has led to the development of intelligence-led

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. Collection is ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involve measures to prevent and thwarting other nations attempts to penetration into own nations intelligence system; while offensive deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce excellent analysis of the intelligence, but ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence the final results (Van Cleave, 2013). According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011) “Significant advances have been made in clarifying and rectifying intelligence gaps and requirements through the formation of liaison and working relationships with other U.S. intelligence community agencies, foreign partners, the private sector, and academia”. For instance, since 2001, FBI CI program has resulted to total arrests of 249, of which 46 of them were linked to espionage. Counterintelligence (CI)

Interesting post. The interest on open sources resulted in the creation of a new office dedicated to Open Source which is under the direction of the Director of National Intelligence, which is managed by the Central Intelligence Agency.1 Unfortunately, in previous years OSINT was viewed as unnecessary to national intelligence due to the low reliability of sources coming from “the misinformation, secret messages, disinformation, and nonsense content of OSINT sources”2 The intelligence community identified that OSINT when properly used is believed to be as crucial as any other intelligence collection platform.3 Together with other forms of intelligence collection, OSINT provides information about the adversaries and its intention.

Fusion centers provide multidisciplinary expertise and situational awareness to decision makers at all levels of government. Fusion centers encourage analysis and information sharing among local and state law enforcement agencies and homeland security partners with the aim of preventing and responding to crime and terrorism (Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, 2010). Fusion Centers put analysts from different agencies and departments into one central location, and allows for the open sharing of information. The intelligence products produced from Fusion Centers can provide a strategic picture of criminal activity within a region or state and influence policy makers and drive the decision-making process. These same products can also drive how criminals are apprehended, and how operations and investigations will be planned and

The current structure of the intelligence community is built around a process where each organization has their own lane, specialty or area of responsibility. Furthermore, they now communicate equilaterally as opposed to before 9/11 where the intelligence agencies did not collaborate with each other on a routine basis. Gathered intelligence was not shared across the intelligence community. Additionally, there are oversight agencies that provide protection and safety for U.S. citizens or anyone alike from being illegally prosecuted and collected upon. Today, under new reform, there are a total of 16 individual acting federal agencies and one overarching agency called the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (Washington Post,

However with recent crime technology, changes in information management and information communications technology (ICT) they have been able to identify “trends, including hotspots, emerging crime groups and targets” (Chantler and Throne 2009, p. 127) and become more proactive in the field. With the growth of organised and transnational crime, intelligence-led policing is the best methodology to effectively combat organised and transnational organised crime (Bell and Congram 2013). Bell and Congram (2013, p. 19) states that transnational organised crime are “vulnerable to detection and disruption because of their communication” thus the use of information communications technology in intelligence-led practices helps reduce the risk of an intelligence attack (Waters, Ball & Dudgeon, 2008; Jackson et al.,

Intelligence collection and apprehension of criminals have occurred for many years; however, with the exception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, these actions were performed by different organizations. Nonetheless, roles and responsibilities have changed since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Intelligence-led policing and the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing program were incorporated, and fusion centers were established to help gather intelligence from different levels of the government. Although law enforcement at the local, state, and tribal levels aid in intelligence collection, it is important to ensure that intelligence gathered to protect national security and law enforcement