Barriers to Cooperation on National Security

The events of 9/11 awoke the nation to a danger long apparent to the intelligence community - the threat of highly-committed enemies organized in small, difficult to penetrate clandestine cells. But the recent public clamor to integrate and share intelligence information to prevent future tragedies overlooks a lurking danger all too familiar to intelligence experts. For them, the danger of insider betrayal can never be too far from mind. Fifteen years ago, John Walker's betrayal revealed codes to our enemies that disclosed secure tactical military communications. Had war occurred at that time, such a compromise in security might have changed the outcome. More recently, Robert Hansen's betrayal cut deep. The nation lost important sources of intelligence information when Hansen compromised the identities of foreign intelligence operatives. (Note, this was written in Spring 2002. The problem has changed little.)

These betrayals obviously hamper recruitment of new sources; how many people will cooperate with the US if it may cost their life? Moreover, these events make it unrealistic to expect agencies to fully share information. If the Navy or the FBI cannot be trusted to keep a clean house, why should an intelligence unit risk its hard-won information assets by sharing them with other units? Anyone who hopes the nation can ward off future 9/11 type events by sharing intelligence information needs take a deep look at the difficulties facing the experts.

A Way to Reduce Barriers to Information Sharing

Fortunately, software technology offers a way to share classified data without allowing massive security compromises. The key is the exchange of small amounts of information on a need-to-know basis with carefully selected partners or allies. This is no more that conventional wisdom; however, conventional data integration techniques don't supply the technology to implement the concepts in an information system.

Adding the technology of WWN to existing data management systems would allow national security agencies to safely cooperate on the serious threats to the country.