March 30, 2004
A Data Catch-22... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
Following the shock of 9/11, one of the first questions asked was "Didn't we have any inkling that this was going to happen?" The stunning answer was "Yes." In my mind, this was followed by a two-beat pause and the acknowledgement that cross-referencing databases from the various intelligence agencies, along with giveaway behaviors available from the private sector, would have foiled the perpetrators.
Finger pointing aside, data just wasn't being shared, and the next question was "Well, why not?" This time the answer came back fairly garbled, so the need to do just that became clear and pressing.
If you think the solution is easy, go out to the Markle Foundation website and download a report entitled "Creating a Trusted Information Network for Homeland Security". It reveals the thinking of a national task force, which Markle assembled from a wide net of professionals representing many fields. Besides a short assessment of the government's progress to date, the task force created in-depth strategies for both looking at the problem as well as solving it.
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Starting with the private sector, there are any number of familiar questions: Should how you pay for your airline ticket be private information, guaranteed under the Constitution? Or should it be accessible to help counter-terrorism?
To be truthful, the question as posed is disingenuous. You see, data is so much more revealing if people have no idea it's being collected. And that sends us down the slippery road to secrecy, where the password is "Need To Know."
This brings us directly over to the government side. Both classified and unclassified data begin with the CIA and the FBI - and who knows where else - and drills right on down to state and local agencies. Unfortunately, our federal government organizations - and their technologies - are products of an earlier era.
Huge warhorse databases stand guard on over-classified information, the zeitgeist for which was born in the Cold War. "Who knew what about whom" was to be controlled - not shared. De-classifying data meant it was no longer valuable. If it could potentially have value to someone, it wasn't declassified.
That's right - what we've got here is a "Data Catch-22."
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All agencies (and their agents) which operate "in the dark" have always held fast to the notion that all things were secure until they were useless. The idea that portions of a single document could have different security classifications - and that these classifications could be created in the field and on the fly - turns conventional secrecy guidelines on its head. You see, the fact that the agent thinks a piece of data has a particular security classification is in and of itself "information." And yet ... and yet ... there can be no cross-linking of information unless data is released for sharing.
At the same time, government agencies are talking about compartmentalizing their own databases. They want to de-link their own data so that rogue agents within their own ranks can be contained. Just like a spy thriller, we've moving both toward and away from sharing data - all at the same time.
Well, here's the bottom line: The American public knew to ask, "Why isn't the data being shared?" And the change that is needed is so vast and incomprehensible - technologically, organizationally and individually - it is unlikely it can ever be accomplished from within. What the Markle Foundation has done is bring an American brain trust to government's door.
Still, I wonder: If the Markle Foundation hadn't picked up the charge, would the photo op declaring "Data Mission Accomplished" already be yesterday's news?
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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