Report Urges Government To Improve Info SharingReport Urges Government To Improve Info Sharing

A bipartisan task force co-chaired by former Netscape CEO James Barksdale says the federal government should do more to develop a less-secretive network that would share homeland-security intelligence with state and local governments and the private sector.

The report, Creating A Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security, was issued this week by the Markle Foundation, which promotes the use of technologies to address critical public needs.

The task force contends that the government isn't giving high priority to sharing and analyzing homeland-security information with state and local governments and the private sector. It says existing systems are based on a Cold War intelligence architecture that required tightly controlled access to data in which individuals had to provide a need-to-know explanation in order to gain access to certain information. The system reflected the judgment that the risk of inadvertent or malicious disclosure was greater than the benefit of wider information sharing. "This architecture and the underlying assumptions are ill suited to today's challenges," the report states. "The events of Sept. 11, 2001, have starkly demonstrated the dangers associated with the failure to share information."

The report also calls on the federal government to effectively use valuable information held by the private sector--but only within a system of rules aimed at protecting civil liberties. "The travel, hotel, financial, immigration, health, or educational records of a person suspected by our government of planning terrorism may hold information that is vital to unveiling both his activities and the identities and activities of other terrorists," the report says, adding that the network it envisages would empower all participants to be full and active partners in protecting security, and which would be governed by guidelines designed to protect our liberties.

Besides Barksdale, the task force was chaired by Markle Foundation president and former Carter and Clinton administration adviser Zoe Baird. Panel members include Democrat presidential aspirant Wesley Clark, 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou, Internet guru Esther Dyson, and Environmental Protection Agency director Michael Leavitt, who was governor of Utah at the time the group held meetings.