DOJ Pushes To Broaden Data Sharing

Computerworld - The U.S. Department of Justice is pushing the FBI and its other operating units to speed up and expand their efforts to share a wide array of crime information with outside law enforcement agencies via a centralized database called OneDOJ.

In a Dec. 21 memo, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty also directed CIO Vance Hitch to work with all of the DOJ’s component agencies to develop “an aggressive but practical plan” for increasing their information-sharing capabilities. The plans, which must be submitted to McNulty’s office by Feb. 9, will include steps that can be taken within the next 180 days to enable the units to participate more fully in seven ongoing data-sharing initiatives.

In addition, McNulty assigned Hitch to a new committee that will coordinate the DOJ’s information-sharing program. And he said in the memo that the coordinating committee and his staff will work with Hitch’s office to develop plans for implementing the Unix-based OneDOJ technology internally in 15 high-priority metropolitan areas and other regions.

The plan to expand the use of OneDOJ by other law enforcement authorities at the federal, state and local levels has raised the hackles of some privacy and civil rights advocates, who said last week that the DOJ will need to work hard to ensure that the increased information sharing doesn’t infringe on the rights of law-abiding Americans.

“The problem is the ease with which the information held by multiple agencies can be accessed in one place,” said Allison Knight, staff counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. Any inaccurate data stored in OneDOJ could be quickly disseminated to a large number of law enforcement officials, she said, adding that the DOJ should enable people to correct erroneous information.

Knight also said that the centralized database could become a big target of hackers and other unauthorized users. DOJ officials need to ensure that deep security and safety mechanisms are in place to prevent breaches, she said.

OneDOJ is “far more than just bringing together all the information they have,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Once you put all the information in one place, it enables the kind of data mining that’s not possible by traditional law enforcement.”

One problem, Steinhardt added, is that the DOJ, and the FBI in particular, have been “notoriously inept at managing [their] computing resources.”

For example, the FBI in 2005 scrapped a three-year, $170million effort to develop an automated case management system and is now pursuing a project called Sentinel that isn’t due for completion until late 2009. And the DOJ received a D grade for computer security on an annual report card issued by a congressional committee last March.