DefenseTech has a follow-up post re: the FBI, whose technophobia they recently covered in a half-amused, half-horrified manner. Today's post includes this:
"The salient fact is that, approaching five years after 9/11, we still do not have a domestic intelligence service that can collect effectively against the terrorist threat to the homeland or provide authoritative analysis of that threat," John Gannon, a former CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today. "It is not enough to say these things take time..."
It isn't; and even given the individual's CIA-interests point of view, I'd say he has a point.
Changing organizations of any size is hard. Very hard - and the larger they are, and the more solid culture and tradition they have, the harder it usually is. Which is why the solution for radically new environments is often to incubate a new company or organization to deal with them. For various reasons, this approach has not been taken with the FBI. My take: until it is, expect either very slow change or none - and in the interim, America will have more exploitable weak spots as a result.
Sounds like a good time to revive the post I wrote 15 months ago on the Virtual Case File debacle.
Joe,
I've written about this before as I have some personal experience dealing with the FBI and other lettered fed agencies in my former occupation.
Their organizational mindset is still stuck in the Cold War Era with everything airwalled/locked up as tight as a drum. Many of their street level agents especially those with prior local law enforcement experience want to help but are stymied by multiple layers of adm overhead that are risk adverse to the max.
A case in point I had to finally set up a throwaway freebie web email box to dump things of interest for the agent in charge of our regional JTTF ofc in our corner of So Cal. He then could log on from a "steno" computer that was not airwalled off. I could not send an email directly to him.
The FBI field agents to their credit quickly ID'd the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attack. But the FBI's IT system could not transfer their photos to the regional offices where immediate follow-up was needed to see if there were additional attacks in the works. They had to overnight mail the photos.
Mind you scanners, yahoo photos and other web freebies existed at that time!
At least this was better than the local resident SS office. Had an occassion to pass info along to other regional LE agencies in our area. This info involved a potential three striker that was running amok and involved in large amounts of ID theft (The SS has federal juridiction for this crime).
Mind you this guy was a danger to all LE agents in our area. I made the mistake of emailing your basic BOLO to the local SS office manager (Had her email address that worked) in a group mailing to other LE investigators.
I got "reamed" the next day by the resident SS agent in charge for sending the email. He wanted this info by telephone. I told him I posted this info after hours in a group email to all those who I thought would be interested. Needless to say that was the last time I shared info with them.
This subject later tried to run over detectives that had staked out an apartment where he was believed to be staying. He was killed in the ensuing gun fight.
This SS agent has since moved on and things were much improved when I left.
In another case our patrol folks snagged a person attempting to pass a stolen and forged county check. This guy was an Afganee and according to the arresting office was shaking in his boots. He mentioned he was part of a "ring" and was afraid for his family. He admitted he was in this country illegally. He was later booked into our local county jail. The jail folks called the "Bureau" don't know if they ever made it out. He bailed out before the arrest paperwork reached our desk.
I called ICE's 24 hour notification number listed on their website. They are supposed to be the point agency for this kind of thing. The call taker was questioning how I had obtained the phone number. After we resolved that issue, he asked was I calling because of a NCIC match to one of the watch lists. I said no.
I then provided him with the guys name, rank, and serial number. Of course he was not on one of the watch lists. He then asked why was I calling. I said I had a photo and most importantly I fingerprints of this subject, and he was engaging in economic crime activity to raise funds. This ICE guy was totally unprepared to receive info from the bottom. Mind you this behavior is a classic sign of a member of a terrorist logistical cell.
The point being the career bureaucrats in many of these agencies are so caught in the rules they loose sight of the mission. It goes beyond just IT management systems, it's an organizational cultural thing.
Where are the Jack Bauers when you need them! :--)
RBT
I posted this over at Defencetech.org and will copy here.
This may sound taboo to many but I still think the FBI should stick to perverts and domestic criminal activities and the CIA should be in charge and like the FBI can do to the local cops the CIA should be able to assign local FBI to help track suspects or help in general.
Terrorist are a foreign infiltration Military not domestic criminals. We are not talking about some racist Americans born and bread here but pissed about were to sit on the bus we are talking about foreign nationals and immigrants that have been purposely infiltrated into our nation by a stateless yes but definitely organized nation/movement to kill our Nation. This is WAR not a police action. These guys don’t want to rob the local bank or kill some victim in the shadows they want to kill absolutely the maximum number of US citizens as humanly possible.
The FBI has for very good reason very strict limitations to protect our citizen’s rights when dealing with cases. But when it comes to foreign terrorist that are driven by the objective to kill as many as possible those limits just get in the way of expediting our defense. The FBI doesn’t have office’s or contacts all over the world in BFE like the CIA does and the CIA has assets/technologies they can exploit overseas that cant be shared with the FBI so because the CIA cant operate in the States we have suspects running free. What kind of sense is that?
Just by the way, to reduce headscratching -- I think a "BOLO" as used in #2 is a "Be On the LookOut" notice.
#4 Nortius Maximus
Sorry. Your guess is correct. Thx for the clarification.
RBT
Buy everyone photo-taking cell phones with web access and the hell with the firewall.
While we're on this topic here's some related thoughts I've written in the past:
POLICE CHIEFS: HOMELAND SECURITY STRATEGY FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED
IACP Urges Focus On Prevention
The following email was sent to groups at Cyber Cop:
Subject: RE IACP'S NEW PUB ON HOMELAND SECURITY
The International Association of Chiefs' of Police (IACP) has just issued a new policy statement re LE's role in the War on Terror. This is a fundamental shift in thinking and how resources should be allocated. This shift is from a reactionary posture to one of actively engaging the enemy before it can strike.
Of course we should be prepared to respond to an attack but our primarily focus and mission must now be one of prevention.
Please see the following comments I sent to the IACP re this new policy statement.
[...]
Yes, I'm afraid too that the white horse from DC won't be riding to town anytime soon to the rescue. Local, regional, and state LE are the
domestic boots on the ground in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The traditional LE paradigm is ill equipped to fight the WOT. We must change and change quickly or the enemy will again deliver a strike in our Homeland. The consequences of such a strike are too great to allow it to happen.
We must fundamentally change our way of thinking. No longer do we have the luxury of preparing to respond to an attack. Our primarily mission must now be to prevent, deter, or mitigate an attack. We must go beyond our normal reactionary and risk adverse mindset. We must do forward strategic thinking. We must build from the ground up to defend against this new threat. This threat is much too big for our federal government and local LE to deal with alone.
We must seek the support and assistance of the American people and tap the vast resources of our private sector. After all the private sector controls over 80% of this Nation's critical infrastructure and they have a strong economic incentive to prevent and/or survive an attack.
[...]
The organizational structure of our new response must be horizontal minimizing the distance between nodes. The danger of centralized Intel resources is that our recognition of a threat will be too slow to take preemptive action. The military has a new term for this thinking "netcentric warfare" and "force multipliers." I've coined a term for this as, "Mission Focused Strategic Communications."
[...]
Read More
#6 Yehudit
Your frame of reference is light years ahead of the bureaucrats.
The bureaucrats will tie themselves in knotts trying to prevent an agent from calling their girlfriend on the company's "nickle." They'll waste hundreds of dollars in productivity on the off chance someone will steal 25 cents.
In many public sector agencies salaries are a sunk cost. Managers are not held accountable re productivity for their FTEs. Hence there is rampent misallocation/underutilization of scarce resources.
My tongue and cheek analogy is akin to having a F-16 on hot standby at the end of the runway only to have the paperclip police distract the pilot requiring counting of paperclips before s/he can roll on an alert notification.
The Air Force has resolved this issue by clearly identifying the prime mission. The organization is aligned to carryout the mission. Cases of the tail wagging the dog are minimized.
RBT
As far as I know the police haven't found all the drugs yet.
And they are going to start looking for terrorists?
Prohibition has its costs: taking our eye off the real danger to focus on a phantom menace.