Source: ARS Technica

Microsoft and GIS vendor ESRI have announced that they are constructing a suite of collaboration tools for intelligence gathering and processing, intended for deployment at the Department of Homeland Security's national fusion centers. The software is built on top of Microsoft's SharePoint server platform and ESRI's ArcGIS Advanced Enterprise server. 

The software will include a "situational awareness portal" with location-based RSS feeds and XML map overlay data. The information that is managed by the system will be made accessible to intelligence analysts through SharePoint. Microsoft says that the framework will be extensible and can be customized to meet additional, unforeseen needs. The bundle also includes terabytes of prerendered satellite imagery that can be used with mapping software. Microsoft plans to expand the scope of the system and use its components to provide a broader and more comprehensive technology solution for security applications.

The fusion center concept was conceived by the 9/11 Commission as part of a strategy that would streamline communication and intelligence sharing among various federal intelligence agencies and state law enforcement. The fusion centers, which are housed in high-security facilities across the country, provide government officials with a venue to collaborate on collection, analysis, and distribution of sensitive intelligence information.

Although the original function of the centers was to empower counterterrorism activity, the mandate has broadened to encompass virtually any perceived threat and the centers themselves are operated with minimal oversight and virtually no public scrutiny. The federal government has pushed aggressively to encourage passage of state laws that would block meaningful oversight of fusion centers in a variety of ways, including making their databases exempt from FOIA requests.

These centers, which will be used as local clearinghouses for intelligence data and surveillance operations, absolutely must have the most secure and reliable software available. Let's digress for a moment and look at some of the reasons why.

A study conducted by the Government Accountability Office last year found 788 documented instances of federal database security breaches between 2003 and 2006. For obvious reasons, it's particularly bad when sensitive intelligence databases get hacked. It's also particularly damaging to the individuals whose information is stored in the databases, because they have no idea what personal data might be in there—some national security databases that are maintained by the government are completely exempt from the disclosure and accountability provisions of the Privacy Act. In a statement to Congress last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned that victims are not informed and have no opportunity to mitigate potential identity theft when these databases are compromised by hackers.

The Office of the Inspector General also produced a report that complained about the large number of inaccuracies in the national terrorist screening database. Errors are a very big concern because law enforcement databases communicate with each other and propagate information in very complex ways. If the systems in the fusion centers don't meet the highest standards for reliability, they could introduce new errors into government data and propagate those errors broadly throughout any number of other intelligence and law enforcement computer systems.

With all of these extreme privacy, security, and reliability risks, the government has to set very high standards for the software that it adopts for fusion centers. So, people will naturally question the choice of Microsoft, as the company's reputation for delivering secure software has been tarnished by a number of past lapses.

In any case, Microsoft focused on the software's functionality, rather than issues with the databases. "Our police forces, sheriff departments and fusion center managers are increasingly relying on collaboration tools that help them connect the dots in a world of asymmetrical threats," said Microsoft state and local government manager Gail Thomas-Flynn. "Microsoft and ESRI's FusionX Appliance provides the layman-to-expert-level technology that can facilitate the intake, analysis, visualization and dissemination of information to the right person, at the right time, in the right place."

Microsoft's mixed reputation for security aside, it's actually a relief to see law enforcement agencies leveraging existing commercial software rather than trying to roll their own. Anything will be an improvement on the FBI's virtual case file system, which cost over $170 million and had to be scrapped after only a week of use because it was so dysfunctional.