Cyber Intelligence Case Study

Since September 11th, there has been great implementation of systems to support the homeland security efforts. These systems include fusion centers and the Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group (ITACG). The purpose of these systems was to ensure intelligence was being shared. This became a stark change from the past where invisible barriers prevented the collective effort of agencies, not only at the state level, but at the federal level, working towards the same objective. Sometimes this same objective included chasing after the same suspect at the local or federal level.

City, county and state agencies were always hindered by the fact of not being able to crosstalk or share intelligence with each other without having to go through court mandated processes to do this. After September 11th, this was not the case. With the establishment of fusion centers, this allowed for city, county, and state law enforcement agencies share information about terrorist threats, criminal activities, and other hazards, with all the intelligence for such threats going to one central hub in which agencies at the state level and below could have direct access to (Blum, 2010). During the fiscal year of 2009, over 70 fusion centers existed. This was laid out as one fusion center per state, and one fusion center per major city. The Department of Homeland Security provided intelligence operation specialists at these fusion centers. The thought process was to ensure the fusion centers provided a direct link between the Department of Homeland Security and the fusion centers. Allowing for direct access to the Department of Homeland Security by the city, county, and state law enforcement agencies for anything related to any case these local law enforcement agencies maybe working at the time. There has been criticism of these fusion centers by the local law enforcement agencies, though. The local law enforcement agencies felt despite sharing information up to the Department of Homeland Security, the local law enforcement agencies felt as if this was not being returned from the Department of Homeland Security back down to the local law enforcement agencies (Blum, 2010). A consolidated effort amongst the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security has been implemented to …show more content…
In this document, there were seven mission objectives outlined in which these objectives were driven by intelligence. The first is Strategic Intelligence. Strategic intelligence not only provided intelligence on enduring issues, but is also a part of the national security decision-making process (Intelligence, 2014). The second is Anticipatory Intelligence. This objective is to use intelligence to predict and anticipate any type of attack against the United States. The third objective is supporting current operations. This objective ensured intelligence is responsive, and helped shaped future operations. The next objective is Cyber Intelligence. This objective collected on any threat to the United States in the form of a cyber-attack. The fifth objective is counterterrorism. This objective is the collection of intel which drives to identify any persons posing a threat to the United States and to anticipate and develop threats (Intelligence, 2014). The sixth objective is counter proliferation, which is countering the threat and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by state, and non-state actors. The seventh, and final, objective is counterintelligence. This objective provides efforts to identify any type of compromise to the United States economic and national security by foreign intelligence