E-neighborhood watch program spreads to half of states

A law enforcement program designed to function like a nationwide e-neighborhood watch is now providing half of U.S. states with an information sharing capability that did not exist before 2001, according to a Homeland Security Department assessment of compliance with the 9/11 commission recommendations on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or NSI, is a federally funded program that trains law enforcement jurisdictions on how to electronically share tips about potential threats using a standard, searchable format.

In 2001, there was no mechanism for local agencies to share intelligence, partly because their computer systems were incompatible, they used different jargon to describe incidents and each had conflicting rules on disclosing personal information.

"While NSI-type capabilities did not exist on 9/11, the program is currently active in 25 states, 13 major cities and with Amtrak," the progress report stated. The operational hubs include, for example, the Arizona Department of Public Safety; Los Angeles, Miami-Dade and Seattle police departments; and New York State Police.

A key recommendation in the 2004 9/11 commission report was to expand information sharing across federal agencies and jurisdictions. Specifically, the commission urged "unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their knowledge in a network-based information sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries."

Recently, DHS tied the public into the NSI effort with its If You See Something Say Something campaign, which encourages people to report signs of crime to the police.

"This campaign is being expanded to places where NSI is being implemented, to ensure that calls to authorities will be handled appropriately, in an environment where privacy and civil liberties protections are in place," the DHS report stated.

Only authorized law enforcement supervisors can log suspicious activity for possible distribution through the secure, vetted network, federal officials explained.

"NSI is really a great example of intelligence-based policing," Kshemendra Paul, program manager for the Information Sharing Environment within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told Nextgov this week.

The initiative has a policy element that teaches officers how to recognize behaviors associated with terrorism, as well as a technology component that helps them document and search those observations to recognize patterns.

Participating jurisdictions must use the same vocabularies and data fields but they do not need the same hardware or software. To adhere to state and local privacy policies, they can choose not to release certain kinds of information, such as data fields that may identify an individual.

"This is whole of government, but it's local control -- to make sure the reports are vetted and they are in accord with local privacy policies," Paul said. Law enforcement officials and analysts at regional "fusion centers" across the country decide which police reports are significant enough to circulate nationwide.

Some privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed concern that many of the actions NSI labels as potential signs of terrorist activity may be harmless tourist habits, such as taking multiple pictures of a landmark.

But federal officials say the program instructs officers to spot behaviors, not people, that research has shown are indicative of criminal activity, or "the what, not the who," as explained in the Information Sharing Environment 2011 annual report to Congress, released June 30.

This week's 9/11 progress report stated, "To date, more than 46,000 front-line law enforcement personnel have received suspicious activity reporting training, with all front-line law enforcement personnel in the United States expected to receive this training by fall 2011."

Federal officials also have issued guidelines on how to distinguish between innocent cultural behaviors and behaviors that could reflect criminal enterprise or terrorism precursor activities.

The annual report to Congress said that the federal government has collaborated with organizations -- including the American Civil Liberties Union -- to develop an NSI privacy framework that officials are "working diligently" to implement.