Legal Research

National Federal Local Data Exchange For Police Expands

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime and Justice News, March 6, 2008.

Several thousand law enforcement agencies are creating the foundation of a domestic intelligence system through computer networks that analyze vast amounts of police information to fight crime and root out terror plots, reports the Washington Post. As authorities struggled to meet information-sharing mandates after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, police agencies poured millions of criminal and investigative records into shared digital repositories called data warehouses, giving investigators and analysts new power to discern links among people, patterns of behavior, and other hidden clues.

Those network efforts will begin expanding this month, as some local and state agencies connect to a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Federal authorities hope N-DEx will become what one called a "one-stop shop" enabling federal law enforcement, counterterrorism and intelligence analysts to examine the enormous caches of local and state records for the first time. Although Americans have seeen dazzling examples of fictional crime-busting gear on television and in movies, law enforcement's search for clues has in reality involved a mundane mix of disjointed computers, legwork and luck. These new systems are transforming that process. "It's going from the horse-and-buggy days to the space age," said Sgt. Chuck Violette of the Tucson police department, one of almost 1,600 law enforcement agencies that uses a commercial data-mining system called Coplink. The expanding police systems illustrate the prominent roles that private companies play in homeland security and counterterrorism efforts.

Washington Post

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).