Terrorism Information Sharing and the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Report Initiative

Book excerpt: This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. The 9/11 Commission cited breakdowns in info. sharing and the failure to fuse pertinent intelligence as key factors in the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) contain info. about criminal activity that may also reveal terrorist pre-operational planning. The Nationwide SAR Initiative (NSI) is an effort to have fed., state, local, and tribal law enforcement org. participate in a standardized, integrated approach to gathering, documenting, processing, and analyzing terrorism-related SARs. This report describes the NSI, the rationale for the sharing of terrorism-related SARs, and how the NSI seeks to achieve this objective. It examines the privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by the initiative. Charts and tables.