New database critical to success of "See Something, Say Something"
the community — [and] determine what’s valid and what is really connected and what could turn into some type of terroristic event,” he said.
The new operability of the system comes with the introduction of the “See Something, Say Something” program which is expected to generate a large increase in tips.
Under the program, individuals are encouraged to report suspicious activity to local authorities rather than federal agencies, which is in turn encouraging fusion centers to improve data collection procedures.
Kevin Miller, the director of the Nebraska Information Analysis Center (NIAC), a fusion center, said, “We’re definitely preparing for what we think could be a significant boost in reports.”
States including Tennessee, Colorado, and Nebraska are automating the process with online forms that are automatically routed to a fusion center for vetting and analysis.
“We’ve kind of adopted this general principle that it’s important to vet a report as close as possible to its origin,” said Paul Wormeli, the former executive director of the IJIS Institute which provides hardware and software for NSARI. Doing so will allow agents to quickly throw out bad reports based on predictive analysis tools and focus on potential threats that require further analysis.
Malcolm Sloane, program manager at the Tennessee Fusion System, agreed and added that “Having all those SARs in the same repository within our fusion center gives us the ability to see or connect those dots in a way that helps us understand if there is a focused attention on certain aspects of critical infrastructure or activity that may be focused in one area or even across the state.”
DHS officials say that NSARI has three key components. The first is the front-end collection of SARs from local law enforcement agencies, before they are vetted at fusion centers. Finally the reports deemed relevant are shared through the national database that will allow fusion centers to search across all other centers.
“Ultimately, this process has got to be automated, because if we are successful getting lots of people in the country to report this information, it will swamp the manual investigator,” Wormeli.
According to DHS officials, the nationwide implementation of this system is well under way. Roughly twenty fusion centers are already hooked into the NSARI system with ten to fifteen sites scheduled to join by the middle of spring.
Lewis hopes that all seventy-two fusion centers will be hooked into the system by September of this year.
As evidence of the program’s success, a recent planned terrorist attack in Texas was thwarted when two tips came in using the system. They eventually led to the arrest of a Saudi college student who was planning a chemical attack.
