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History in the Making
Some say that the events leading up to 9/11 were based on a minimal amount of cooperation and support between different federal agencies. In fact, the joint inquiry into the 9/11 attacks by the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence stated that a lack of shared technology and trust (political) among the various intelligence and law enforcement agencies hindered information sharing and analysis that ultimately failed to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Last month, Visual Analytics, Inc. (VAI) helped make history when data was transferred between different agencies using the Server-to-Server (S2S) features available within the DIG system. This marks the first time that a remote site was officially provided with the means to remotely access, query, and download data from internal systems for both federal and state agencies using this type of technology.
With support from the Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center (CTAC) of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), resources were made available to support a select set of High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) organizations. Specifically, the Philadelphia/Camden, Washington-Baltimore, and New Jersey HIDTAs were successfully connected using the DIG S2S capabilities. Each HIDTA internally supports a wide number of entities from state/county/city police departments, special task forces, prosecutor's offices, and liaisons to federal agencies.
Unlike other approaches, which require a centralized data warehouse where all information must be sent, the S2S approach employed by VAI provides a much more powerful, maintainable, and cost-effective method for sharing data. Without the need for supercomputers, large recurring costs, or extensive infrastructures, the use of S2S keeps all data under the control of the participating agency. Thus, information is always up to date, accounting logs can be locally checked, and access granted/denied on a moment's notice. Privacy concerns are virtually eliminated because all access controls remain with the agency that owns the data.
Continued on VAI News page
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