On the one hand, law and order is better than crime. On the other hand, massive federal databases make some people fear for their liberty.

The Justice Department is building a massive database that allows state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies, according to Justice officials.

The system, known as “OneDOJ,” already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years, Justice officials said. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offenses, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets, officials said.

… Eventually, the department hopes, the database will be a central mechanism for sharing federal law enforcement information with local and state investigators, who now run checks individually, and often manually, with Justice’s five main law enforcement agencies: the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Within three years, officials said, about 750 law enforcement agencies nationwide will have access.

[T]he information available in the database already is held individually by the FBI and other federal agencies. Much information will be kept out of the system, including data about public corruption cases, classified or sensitive topics, confidential informants, administrative cases and civil rights probes involving allegations of wrongdoing by police, officials said.

[Washington Post]

Via Slashdot.

Department of Justice - Using e-Government to Fight Crime and Terrorism

Using innovative e-Government technologies, DOJ will help transform the capabilities of law enforcement agencies at all levels of government. The focal point of this transformation is the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program (LEISP), a strategy for DOJ to share information readily to the entire law enforcement community and to guide the investment of resources in information systems that will further this goal. Here is some of the progress accomplished in FY 2005:

DOJ developed the OneDOJ information sharing policy for electronically exchanging open- and closed-case investigation information with state, local and other federal law enforcement partners. During the summer of 2005, this policy was uniformly implemented across five investigative components at DOJ (ATF, BOP, DEA, FBI and USMS). At the same time, the FBI’s R-DEx project was identified and leveraged to become DOJ’s single sharing repository (OneDOJ) for free-text case information and an open interface standard was developed for electronic sharing. Staring in August 2005, a pilot was established and DOJ’s case information is now being shared with the Northwest Law Enforcement Information Exchange (Northwest LInX), which includes the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and law enforcement agencies across the State of Washington.

[PDF: Department of Justice]

The FBI Learns to Share - April 2005

Sharing of law enforcement information is a national mandate and ordered by the President. The FBI as an integral arm of the Justice Department is implementing the Justice Department “Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program” (LEISP) through the FBI National Information Sharing Strategy (NISS). An early capability of the NISS has been the Regional Data Exchange Program, which is targeted to bring added search and analysis capabilities to regional law enforcement groups.

[fbi.gov]

DOJ in Competition with Homeland Security - February 2005

One area slated for a significant boost is the Justice Information Sharing Technology project, which falls under the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program.

… Justice is pursuing the program under the aegis of Executive Order 13356, Strengthening the Sharing of Terrorism Information to Protect Americans, and last year’s intelligence reform law, known as the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, as well as the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, an interagency agreement.

Justice plans to use the FBI’s Regional Data Exchange, or R-DEx system, as a format for sharing full-text crime information and to build a National Data Exchange, or N-DEx, to provide nationwide criminal reporting and terrorism information-sharing functions. “N-DEx and R-DEx are elements of the FBI’s National Information Sharing Strategy, a component piece of LEISP Strategy designed to improve the FBI’s information-sharing throughout the nation,” according to the Justice memo.

One feature of N-DEx and R-DEx will be consistent data-tagging protocols for information about crimes and terrorism, sources inside the department said.

Justice formerly identified the JIST account as the Identification Integration Systems Account, which included spending for the Joint Automated Booking System, the IDENT/IAFIS Integration project to merge fingerprint databases, and other projects.

Justice’s 2006 budget proposal states that JIST will help provide secure data communication, design a common case management system and fund the department’s office automation projects. Justice is cooperating with the Homeland Security Department to design the Federal Investigative Case Management System, which likely will replace the FBI’s foundering Virtual Case File system for case management.

[Government Computer News]

DOJ readies regional exchange - April 2005

Justice Department officials are readying an operational pilot to test the Regional Data Exchange, an FBI-led effort to share crime information between federal, state and local law enforcement organizations.

… Regional pilots of the National Data Exchange, an effort to create a central data repository of law enforcement incident and event reports also led by the FBI, are already underway ….

Both the national and regional data projects form part of the department’s Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program (LEISP), an effort to distribute nationwide data captured by all levels of law enforcement. Full implementation of LEISP projects will require an ongoing series of pilots ….

Although the data exchanges are FBI-directed projects, funding in fiscal 2006 will come from a centralized account for information sharing technology in the Justice CIO shop.

[FCW Media Group]