A day that began as any normal day before it. People going about their business living their day-to-day lives. That sense of normalcy disappeared in an instant. Lacking that “old normal” from September 10, 2001 represents the biggest change in the last decade.
The events that occurred on September 11 are the primary reason so many of us – the law enforcement and intelligence communities in particular – work so hard to enhance our security capabilities in preventing another attack.
As CEO of i2, I am always humbled by the commitment and dedication of our police officers, intelligence analysts and the men and women serving in uniform around the world. Their sacrifices to make the world more secure never go unnoticed. I’m often asked if we’re safer today than we were on September 11. As a nation, we have come a long way in fixing some of the problems the 9/11 Commission highlighted in its report. For example: READ MORE 
When crime and terrorism occur they rarely respect jurisdictional boundaries. To combat these criminals, law enforcement organizations have to be prepared to share information from the bottom-up and top-down. The rise of fusion centers and information sharing initiatives across the nation have paved the way over the years to bridge intelligence gaps and put the right information in the right hands, at their point of need.
At the same time, there are still many challenges to face before information sharing becomes de riguer across local, state, national and international boundaries. To better understand and communicate these issues, i2 hosted an information sharing panel at its Americas User Conference earlier this month.
Panelists included Kathleen O’Toole, the Chief Inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate in Ireland, who was previously the Boston, Mass., Police Commissioner. During her time in Boston, she was critical to the founding of the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of the nation’s first fusion centers. Deputy Chief Troy Smith of the Grand Junction Police Department in Colorado also offered up his expertise gleaned from his department’s organization in getting Colorado to be one of the states that has successfully established information sharing state-wide. Tim Riley, a current i2 SVP and former CIO for the Los Angeles Police Department, played a large role in establishing information sharing agreements between the LAPD, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Orange County. Chriss Knisley, the i2 Assistant Vice President for the COPLINK product line was also in attendance to discuss the technological standpoint of information sharing. i2’s Director of Corporate Communications Mitch Derman moderated the session.
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This post was developed by i2 as an advertorial for the Spring 2011 edition of RUSI’s (The Royal United Services Institute) Defence Systems.
In 2003, Saddam Hussein was on the run. With his chain of command eliminated, traditional intelligence efforts to track him down were failing. Col. James Hickey, U.S. Army, heading the intelligence operation to find Saddam, determined that the reclusive Iraqi dictator only trusted and communicated with family members of his own tribal group. As Hickey said, “We built a fairly elaborate estimate of who Saddam’s supporters were in the area; though it did provide security, it also worked against them. Once we learnt who did what, it allowed us to work against them.”1
Hickey and his team were using a nascent form of Social Network Analysis (SNA). In its purest form, SNA relies on examining the linkages between people and places within a defined group or locality in order to deduce the key decision makers or vulnerable links and where they are located. In this case, it was the pinpointing of Saddam’s chauffeurs that led to his historic capture.
Figure 1
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Far removed from the glamour and adrenaline of the game-day atmosphere that will descend upon Cowboys Stadium for Super Bowl XLV this Sunday, a just as intense but completely surreptitious battle is being waged, not on the gridiron, but among the analysts at the North Central Texas and Dallas Fusion Centers. These analysts are charged with helping support the security infrastructure around the biggest spectacle in American sports. Victory for them is to go unnoticed. Their foe, however, comes not in the form of a potent pass rush or disguised defensive scheme, but is itself invisible – a potential threat lurking amid the more than 150,000 people that have started to migrate to North Texas for the big game. 
As the former CIO of the Los Angeles Police Department, I’ve had the privilege of being part of the security infrastructure for many large gatherings – the Academy Awards and the NBA Finals at Staples Center to name a few. The planning and coordination among many law enforcement agencies is critical to the success of securing any event of this scope. READ MORE
On December 20, The Washington Post published an in-depth article by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter, Dana Priest, and political commentator and author, William M. Arkin, entitled: Monitoring America. Focusing on the growth and expansion of local and domestic intelligence capabilities since the 9/11 attacks, Priest and Arkin talk about the potential mis-use of information – however, they fail to mention the positive impacts the growth in information sharing between local and federal law enforcement has had in increasing efficiencies in thwarting terrorist and criminal activities – all in a way that has civil liberties protections built into the process.
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Robert Griffin Joins Board for Three-Year Term
The Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) today named i2 CEO Robert Griffin to its Board of Directors. Griffin joins industry and government leaders from Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI, Lockheed Martin, ManTech, Microsoft, QinetiQ North America, Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems, SAIC and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In this role, he will work with the Board to help drive INSA’s agenda across the Intelligence and National Security Communities.
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General Keith Alexander, the new Cyber Command Chief, recently stated that his current mandate is to protect against cyber threats to the Department of Defense. However, current law does not dictate how to protect critical infrastructure managed and/or used by the private sector. In testimony on Capitol Hill last week, Gen. Alexander essentially supported the notion that this planning cannot be done in a vacuum, but with the full input and support from private industry.
“We cannot do it without industry support, and industry can’t do it without our support,” he said. “But by the time a company reaches out to DHS after an attack, the damage is already done.”
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There is not a single person on earth that wasn’t impacted in some way by the terrorist attacks that took place in the Eastern United States on the morning of September 11, 2001. The images were not only unbelievable, but as the details were released about the attacks and information began to be released about the number of people injured and killed, we knew that the world had changed in many ways that most of us on September 10th couldn’t have imagined. READ MORE
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