[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
USING OPEN-SOURCE INFORMATION EFFECTIVELY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
INFORMATION SHARING, AND
TERRORISM RISK ASSESSMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 21, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-22
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
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__________
?
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Christopher Cox, California, Chairman
Don Young, Alaska Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Lamar S. Smith, Texas Loretta Sanchez, California
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania, Vice Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Chairman Norman D. Dicks, Washington
Christopher Shays, Connecticut Jane Harman, California
Peter T. King, New York Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
John Linder, Georgia Nita M. Lowey, New York
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Tom Davis, Virginia Columbia
Daniel E. Lungren, California Zoe Lofgren, California
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Rob Simmons, Connecticut Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey
Mike Rogers, Alabama Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Islands
Katherine Harris, Florida Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Dave G. Reichert, Washington Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Michael McCaul, Texas
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, INFORMATION SHARING, AND TERRORISM RISK
ASSESSMENT
Rob Simmons, Connecticut, Chairman
Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Zoe Lofgren, California
Peter T. King, New York Loretta Sanchez, California
Mark E. Souder, Indiana Jane Harman, California
Daniel E. Lungren, California Nita M. Lowey, New York
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Bob Etheridge, North Carolina
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana James R. Langevin, Rhode Island
Dave G. Reichert, Washington Kendrick B. Meek, Florida
Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi
Christopher Cox, California (Ex (Ex Officio)
Officio)
(II)
C O N T E N T S
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Page
STATEMENTS
The Honorable Rob Simmons, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Connecticut, and Chairman, Subcommittee on
Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk
Assessment..................................................... 1
The Honorable Zoe Lofgren, a Representative in Congress From the
State of California, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on
Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk
Assessment..................................................... 23
The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California, and Chairman, Committee on Homeland
Security....................................................... 3
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Committee on
Homeland Security.............................................. 4
The Honorable Charlie Dent, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Pennsylvania.......................................... 31
The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress From
the State of North Carolina.................................... 30
The Honorable Jane Harman, a Representative in Congress From the
State California............................................... 39
The Honorable James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Rhode Island................................. 33
The Honorable Daniel E. Lungren, a Representative in Congress
From the State of California................................... 28
The Honorable Loretta Sanchez, a Representative in Congress From
the State of California........................................ 37
The Honorable Curt Weldon, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Pennsylvania.......................................... 35
WITNESSES
Dr. John C. Gannon, Vice President for Global Analysis. BAE
Systems, Information Technology:
Oral Statement................................................. 5
Prepared Statement............................................. 8
Mr. Eliot Jardines, President, Open Source Publishing, Inc.:
Oral Statement................................................. 11
Prepared Statement............................................. 13
Mr. Joe Onek, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Institute:
Oral Statement................................................. 18
Prepared Statement............................................. 18
For the Record
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee, a
Representative in Congress From the State of Texas............. 40
USING OPEN-SOURCE INFORMATION EFFECTIVELY
----------
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information
Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in
Room 210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Rob Simmons
[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Simmons, Cox, Weldon, Lungren,
Pearce, Dent, Thompson, Lofgren, Sanchez, Harman, Jackson Lee,
Etheridge, Langevin, and Meek.
Mr. Simmons. [Presiding.] The Subcommittee on Intelligence,
Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment of the
Committee on Homeland Security will come to order.
Today, the subcommittee meets to examine how open-source
information can most effectively be used to help strengthen the
Department of Homeland Security's information analysis and
intelligence production responsibilities.
Open-source information, by its very nature, is
unclassified, publicly available information that any member of
the public can lawfully obtain. Open-source information may be
used in an unclassified context without compromising national
security or intelligence sources and methods, thereby lending
itself to the Department of Homeland Security's mission to
share information with state, local and tribal governments and
private sector personnel, many of whom do not hold security
clearances.
Open-source intelligence, or OSINT, is produced from open-
source information, can help to inform the Department of
Homeland Security's partners and customers. For example, DHS on
a daily basis produces the open-source infrastructure report to
critical infrastructure owners and operators. And while this
report is limited in scope and sources, it is an effective way
to help ensure that critical partners on the same page with
regard to threat and vulnerability information.
I believe that the Department of Homeland Security and the
U.S. government need to do more to create open-source products
and integrate open-source information into the DHS analytical
product. Both the 9/11 Commission and the WMD Commission
recognized this in their reports, and each recommended that
more be done with open sources.
Open-source information can be the critical foundation for
the all-source intelligence product, a key to ensuring that our
intelligence efforts are well-targeted and our intelligence
analysis is well-informed across the board.
In a rapidly changing post-9/11 world, intelligence
collection and analysis must be flexible enough to respond
quickly to meet the demands of intelligence users. Open-source
material is collected and reported continuously around the
world. It is current and readily available. A comprehensive
open-source capability provides the tools to find that
information quickly and cheaply in a format that is
unclassified and easily shared. This can be an important tool
in defending the homeland.
We are pleased to have with us today three witnesses.
The first is Dr. John Gannon, who currently serves as vice
president for Global Analysis at BAE Systems, Information
Technology. Dr. Gannon joined BAE Systems after serving as
Staff Director of the House Homeland Security Committee.
In 2002-2003, he was a team leader in the White House
Transitional Planning Office for the Department of Homeland
Security and previously served in the senior most analytical
positions in the intelligence community, including chairman of
the National Intelligence Council and assistant director of
Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production.
Last year, President Bush awarded him the national security
medal, the country's highest intelligence award.
Welcome, Dr. Gannon.
Our second witness is Mr. Eliot Jardines, president of Open
Source Publishing, Incorporated and former publisher of Open
Source Quarterly, a professional journal for open-source
intelligence practitioners. Internationally recognized as an
authority on open-source intelligence, he has twice received
the Golden Candle award for open-source excellence at open
source symposiums.
Our third witness is Mr. Joe Onek, a security policy
analyst at the Open Society Policy Center. In this capacity, he
provides counsel on issues of civil liberties and
constitutional law. Mr. Onek first joined the government as a
clerk to Chief Judge David L. Bazelton, of the District of
Columbia circuit, and Supreme Court Justice, William J.
Brennan.
In the Carter administration, he served as a member of the
White House Domestic Policy staff and then as Deputy Counsel to
the President. In the Clinton administration, he served as
Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General and Senior
Coordinator for Rule of Law in the State Department.
In the public interest world, he serves as an attorney and
then director of the Center for Law and Social Policy and is a
senior counsel and director of the Liberty and Security
Initiative and the Constitution Project.
I want to thank all three of our witnesses for being here
today. We look forward to your testimony.
And at this point now I would like to recognize the ranking
member of the subcommittee, the gentlewoman from California,
Ms. Lofgren, for any statement she might wish to make.
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief and
submit my full statement for the record.
I do look forward to Mr. Negroponte's impending report on
whether or not an open-source intelligence center or some other
approach is the best way to ensure that open-source information
is effectively leveraged by our intelligence agencies. And I do
believe and agree that this hearing is important today to focus
in on that issue.
Information sharing, as we know, is key to our efforts to
protect America from terrorism, but while open-source
information will undoubtedly contribute to our overall
objective of promoting effective information sharing, I believe
that this subcommittee must also consider the civil liberties
and privacy implications of this and other new intelligence
resources.
As Mr. Onek has noted in his prepared testimony, it seems
likely that the intelligence community will use data mining of
open-source materials in order to target terrorists who may be
living and working among us, and that does raise issues
relative to privacy, to profiling, and whenever there is
profiling, there is the risk of actually missing terrorists
because the terrorists know probably better than we do what
profile to adopt to avoid being identified.
So I look forward to the testimony of all three of the
individuals, and, specifically, as we move forward, I am eager
to work with you in making sure that while we protect our
nation from terrorism, we also protect our citizens from Big
Brother.
And I yield back.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentlelady for her opening
statement.
I note that the chairman of the full committee has just
arrived, and I would be happy to yield time to the chairman.
Mr. Cox. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to welcome our witnesses and look forward to
hearing their testimony.
I want to thank you for holding this hearing on this topic.
It is rather obvious that we should be using all of the
open-source information that we can get. It is not obvious how
to go about that or the degree to which the way that we have
approached this over a period of years has kept up with or has
not kept up with the pace of change in the production of
information. There simply is more information now available
than ever before, and what to do with it and how to harness it
and how not to overlook the obvious become key questions.
Giving the American taxpayer value for money obviously
requires using information from open source whenever possible,
but the new idea here is simply to ask the question whether the
United States government is effectively using the information
that is most available to help solve the national security
problems that are the most pressing.
We have a large government structure that was erected
during the Cold War. We are trying constantly to keep it
updated, but how much, this hearing is asking, how much of what
we have got by way of existing infrastructure is left over from
those different priorities and that different world, and how
much has changed, how much have we changed already to make sure
that we are tapping all of the resources that are available to
us?
I would not be the first Californian to observe that gold
is gold, whether it is found lying in a streambed or in
sweltering heat deep beneath the surface of the earth. It would
in fact be a real stretch to suggest that with respect to
certain whole fields of studies, such as risk assessment or
microeconomics, which homeland security is very much concerned
with these days if the U.S. government could even compete with
private sector expertise and outside sources in terms of either
quality or currency. That kind of information is critically
important to meeting the mission of the Department of Homeland
Security, particularly its Directorate of Information Analysis
and Infrastructure Protection.
It would be equally absurd to suggest in noting its
historic underappreciation that open-source information is a
panacea, that it should be segregated from information acquired
from clandestine sources in a separate entity or agency
dedicated solely to its collection analysis, a sort of Federal
Bureau of Found Objects. That is exactly the sort of
intelligent-specific balkanization that the Homeland Security
Act seeks to remedy by requiring the IAIP directorate to
generate comprehensive analysis of terrorist threats and U.S.
vulnerabilities in order to produce overall risk assessment.
The key is to bring all the available information,
regardless of its origin or source, together for comprehensive
and expert analysis and then of course to get that information
to people who need it in real time so that we can act upon it.
That was the ultimate lesson of September 11.
I want to add that it is a particular pleasure today to
welcome back John Gannon to the committee, our former Staff
Director who worked so hard for 2 years to create what is now
this Permanent Standing Committee on Homeland Security. I look
forward to his perspectives, as I always have, as well as to
the testimony of our other witnesses.
Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for scheduling
this important hearing.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and for taking time
at what I know is a very busy time for you.
The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member of the full
committee, the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr. Thompson, for
any statement or comments he might wish to make.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member, Chair of the full committee.
Dr. Gannon, glad to see you. There is life after Capitol
Hill.
[Laughter.]
The other witnesses, we are glad to see you too.
I am glad that we are holding a hearing on the critical
issue of open-source information and how the intelligence
community can best leverage it in the fight against terrorism.
Open-source information, when properly assembled and analyzed,
can provide some of the most strategic, tactical and
operational data imaginable in order to obtain an ever-
evolving, near real-time picture of terrorists' plans.
The 9/11 Commission, the Intelligence Reform Act, the WMD
report and our committee's own past authorization bill all can
develop effective open-source information initiatives. I look
forward to the release of the report from the Director of
National Intelligence about whether our nation needs an open-
source intelligence center to centralize and coordinate the use
of open-source information by the intelligence community.
That said, I am very concerned about the implication that
the mining of open-source information will have for civil
liberties and privacy. Emerging technologies are giving both
the government and the private sector increasing precise ways
of harvest very specific information. Not all of this
information is about foreign governments and terrorist groups.
Some of it is about ordinary people, like you and me. Our
government cannot take a casual approach to open-source
gathering.
In an effort to create a homeland security strategy that
protects and strengthens our freedoms, our government cannot
become an entity that whimsically violates our constitutional
liberties and freedoms through surveillance and data mining
that trace our every action and utterance.
Let me say that as a young college student in the sixties,
I was one of those individuals that got a file created because
I attended a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr., and I am
very concerned about the fact that I was generated and
considered something other than a patriot by hearing a speech
from Dr. King.
Open-source information is a resource that must be tapped
to bolster the security of our nation. Information sharing is
absolutely necessary to the defense of our nation. The mining
of open-source information offers exciting possibilities to
protect us from terrorists, but it also raises real risks.
I look forward to the testimony of our panelists today so
that we can establish for this committee a formal policy on
open-source information.
I yield back.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Thompson, for that statement
and very much appreciate your perspectives on this important
issue.
Other members of the committee are reminded that they can
submit opening statements for the record.
And, again, we are pleased to have a distinguished panel of
three gentlemen before us here today.
Let me remind the witnesses that their entire written
statement will appear in the record, and we would ask that you
try to limit your oral testimony to no more than 5 minutes.
There will be a clock in front of you there. In that way, we
can guarantee that members will have maximum opportunity to ask
questions and engage in a dialogue.
That being said, the Chair now recognizes Dr. Gannon for
his testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOHN GANNON, VICE PRESIDENT FOR GLOBAL ANALYSIS,
BAE SYSTEMS, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Gannon. Mr. Chairman, it is a particular pleasure to be
back here, and I would like to take the opportunity right off
the bat to congratulate this full committee for its work in
passing an authorization bill, I know what an achievement that
is, and also for passing the first responder bill. I think a
demonstration of how constructive this committee has been and
how bipartisan, really, the approach has been to these critical
national security problems.
I did submit a statement for the record, and I will very
quickly just summarize the five points that I made there. And,
really, these points come out of my own career in intelligence
over an almost 25-year period.
The first point I make is that the intelligence community's
interest in open source goes back, I think, to the very
beginning to the community itself. As an analyst, I often
consulted with outside experts. We had, as many of you know,
the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which provided us
with daily press and media reports and also translations of
those reports and did a fabulous job over my career in
supporting our analysis.
Those were the days, of course, when we were dealing
primarily with a single strategic threat from the Soviet Union,
very much a closed society where it was very difficult to find
value added in open source, but I think we did a commendable
job of it.
One point I would emphasize, however, about that era,
really sort of prior to the mid-1980s, was that we were
dealing, I think, in a very different environment where the
expertise and the information was pulling from the outside into
the community. We really did see ourselves in the community as
the center of gravity on information and expertise. So I have
described the open source as kind of a frosting on our cake.
Things changed dramatically, really a major paradigm shift,
in the mid-1980s, and I had the responsibility of bringing the
first computers into the Office of European Analysis in the
mid-1980s--five Delta DATAS. I mean, just to demonstrate how
the world has changed, those five computers were put up in
offices where analysts linked to specialists who handled them.
The analysts did not have them at their own desks.
It used to take me in that period about 14 days to get a
newspaper from the Caribbean and Latin America where I was
covering, and policymakers were quite willing to wait for me to
finish my analysis and fulfill the very large information gaps
with my judgments and my expertise.
Three issues I think changed dramatically the environment
in which we worked in the community. First of all, was of
course the information revolution itself where in a period of a
very few years we had computers at every analysts' desk, and
the analysts became quite adept, particularly the new entrants
of that labor force, in dealing with the computer information
technology world.
I talked about taking 14 days to get a newspaper to me when
I started as an analyst. Today, every newspaper virtually in
the world is available to every analyst in the intelligence
community before the people in the country in which the
newspaper is produced get up and read it. We have gone from an
information scarcity environment to an information glut
environment, and the community has struggled to manage that
glut through the development, first of all, by using technology
developed, analytic tools and software that enable us to make
sense of all that information.
But also we had the geopolitical change with the collapse
of the Soviet Union, which brought again from an environment of
a single strategic threat to multiple threats, multiple
conflicts, issues where open source was essential for us to
understand that range and complexity involved in those issues.
And that challenge continues today.
And, finally, the homeland security challenge of more
recent years brought not only a whole range of new issues for
us to deal with where open source is a critical contributor but
also brought us a whole new set of customers in the state and
local governments and the private sector, people who need to
have some form of intelligence support to do the frontline work
or undertake the frontline responsibilities that we say they
have.
We did in the 1980s have an organization called the
Intelligence Community Open Source Program Office, and what I
would point out about this is I think perhaps there are
different judgments about the success or failure of that
office, but I think, to one degree, it failed to adequately
recognize the overwhelming nature of the information change
that had taken place.
COSPO I think treated open source as another INT. It
treated open source as it treated signals intelligence,
measurement and signature intelligence, human intelligence, as
one more INT when in fact we had seen a dramatic shift in the
whole center of gravity of information and expertise outside
the intelligence community into the open source world. So what
COSPO, I think, was doing, as I saw it, was trying to take the
ocean and putting in a swimming pool.
We were challenged in the intelligence community to face
the fact that on the issues that we were dealing with, from the
collapse of the Soviet Union onward, were issues where the
expertise to deal with them and a lot of the information to
deal with them was outside the intelligence community, and we
need multiform strategies to deal with that, including the use
of technology and also getting our analysts, frankly, to move
outside the community, engage with experts who have expertise
and information in their heads, which really never gets
translated into collection systems.
The third critical point I would make is that we discovered
with more and more use of technology to help us deal with the
information flow, that expertise of our analysts actually
became more important. When you are dealing with a flood of
information, having people who really know the issues, who can
extract information or interpret information and analyze it,
you are required to have more and more senior people how really
do know the issues.
And I will tell you, as I went down to a principals meeting
to deal with some of these complex issues in the White House,
at the end of the day, whatever technology had been brought to
bear on our aggregating and analyzing information, I wanted a
human being who knew what he or she was talking about. It is,
in the end, I think about people.
The fourth point I would make is about structure. I do not
think there is any quarrel here or anywhere really in the
community about the importance of open-source information and
about the fact that the intelligence community is behind the
curve and has been for some time in exploiting open-source
information.
But how we structure a solution I think is a matter of
debate, and from my own experience I am clearly on the side of
opposition to new structures, particularly open source
directorates, and I am much more in favor of a distributed
model that puts technology in the hands of all analysts so that
they can use open-source information. Whether a signals
intelligence analyst, a human intelligence analyst, they all
need open source, so you cannot separate it out as a separate
discipline, in my judgment.
So I think we have to pursue an aggressive approach,
bringing technology to bear for the benefit of analysis but not
structured in a way that separates open source from the clear
need to integrate open source with classified information.
And the final point I would make is I think from the days
of the Transition Planning Office and the incorporation, I
think, of a lot of the original discussions into the Homeland
Security Act, it was recognized that the Homeland Security
Department would be uniquely positioned to be a broker of
information on critical issues with regard to homeland
security. The biothreat, for example, the Homeland Security
Department would be in touch with HHS, it would be in touch
with John's Hopkins University, University of Pittsburgh,
Stanford, places that have repositories of real expertise in
bioscience and the biothreat and would be better positioned
than in fact an intelligence agency would to bring that
expertise together, to be the go-to agency for the U.S.
government.
But I would also emphasize, and my own conviction is that,
the Department of Homeland Security, while it has a particular
role to play in the open-source area, it must have, I think, a
fully capable and robust intelligence unit that has full access
to the intelligence community and is a full player in that
community.
[The statement of Dr. Gannon follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. John C. Gannon
Good morning, Mr. Chairman, and members of the subcommittee. It is
a special pleasure for me to participate in this hearing with members
and staff with whom I was privileged to work closely in the recent
past, and to discuss intelligence issues, with which I have been
involved for most of my professional life. The subject of this hearing,
the effective use of open-source information, is a priority issue today
not just for homeland security but for the whole intelligence and law-
enforcement communities.
Intelligence and law-enforcement officers must do their best to
present a complete picture, to integrate classified and unclassified
information in the story they tell. Open-source information is today
more important than ever in getting that story right. The Department of
Homeland Security, in my view, should play a pivotal role in brokering
open-source information and in leveraging expertise outside the IC.
But, to do this effectively, it also must be a key player in the
classified world. In today's intelligence business, you cannot have one
without the other. Intelligence should identify and fill critical gaps
that cannot be addressed by open sources.
Let me summarize the five points I will make this
morning:
1. Open-source exploitation in the IC is as old as the
Community itself. We have always sought open-source information
and selective engagement with outside experts to deepen our
analysis and to drive collection priorities. The Foreign
Broadcast Information Bureau (FBIS) provided excellent coverage
of foreign media during my career. For most of the Cold War
period, however, much of our focus was on the closed societies
of the Soviet Union, in which there was a scarcity of reliable
or useful open-source material to be had. And our open-source
effort was directed toward bringing unclassified information
into our classified environment, which was the center of our
analytic universe.
2. The open-source challenge has increased exponentially over
the past twenty years for at least three key reasons. First,
the revolution in information technology has transformed the
world of both the intelligence analyst and consumer from an
information-scarcity environment to an information-glut
environment. Second, the post-Soviet geopolitical
transformation and the technology revolution have opened closed
societies and introduced new, complex regional and
transnational issues that more often than not require--as a top
priority--heavy doses of real-time open-source information.
And, finally, the emergence of homeland security as a national
priority has introduced new analytic issues, new collection
targets, and a whole set of new intelligence consumers among
state and local governments and the private sector.
By contrast with the Cold War period, the center of gravity for
expertise on many of these issues is outside the IC. We need
new strategies to get this information, including state-of-the-
art analytic tools and far-sighted policies that encourage our
analysts to get away from their desks to engage with outside
experts. Today, this is all a work in progress.
3. The information revolution, paradoxically, has increased the
demand for expert analysts in the IC. Technology is an
indispensable enabler for the IC analyst inundated with
information. But it is no substitute for human expertise. It
takes IC experts to extract the best data from today's fast-
moving information flow and to identify the sharpest outside
experts for consultation. This is a dynamic process, which aims
to get the President, his top advisers, and the Congress the
best answer possible information on any national security
question--by uniting technology and brainpower and by
integrating classified and unclassified information.
4. I believe that the creation of new, large open-source IC
structures, such as an open-source directorate at CIA or any
other agency including DHS, would be a step in the wrong
direction. The challenge for all our analysts today is to
integrate, as never before, the classified and unclassified
environments. All-source analysts and single-INT analysts
(e.g., human intelligence, geospatial intelligence, signals-
intelligence, measurement-and-signature intelligence analysts,
etc.) all need open-source information to make their
contributions to the story being told and to understand where
there are collection gaps that they might be able to fill.
OPINT (open-source) analysts, who increasingly staff IC
operations centers and selective substantive teams, are skilled
technically to exploit open sources. They serve the cause of
integration, not of division between classified and
unclassified information. An open-source directorate, in my
view, would likely complicate this needed integration and
further strain resources already stretched by excessive
structure in the IC.
5. The Information Analysis (IA) component of DHS serves a
Secretary with major responsibilities for prevention of
terrorism against the homeland, for protection of our critical
infrastructure, and for ensuring that we are able to respond
effectively if an attack should occur. The Secretary of
Homeland Security, as I (and the Homeland Security Act of 2002)
see him, is a key player on the President's national security
team, who is uniquely positioned by be an invaluable open-
source collector but still needs a fully capable intelligence
unit to address his critical priorities and to levy his
sensitive collection requirements on the IC. There should be,
in my opinion, a direct relationship between the
responsibilities assigned to the Secretary and the quality of
the intelligence organization dedicated to support him.
This should not require a bureaucratic empire. Senior
expertise on homeland issues is far more important than the
numbers of intelligence analysts in DHS. But IA must be able to
compete in hiring such senior officers. I believe that IA could
be effective as a relatively small intelligence unit if it has
effective outreach within the IC, across the USG, and beyond to
the first-responder community. But it must have adequate
facilities and infrastructure and full connectivity with other
IC agencies. IA, in short, must be a recognized and respected
player in the classified domain. IA must be seen an equal
partner with the other fourteen members of the IC. It must have
the resources and authorities to play this role. Anything less
will perpetuate the unsatisfactory situation we face today.
Critical Importance of Open Source
Open-source information today is indispensable to the production of
authoritative IC analysis. It increasingly contains the best
information to answer some of the most important questions posed to the
IC. Media reports, once the open-source mother lode, are now are just a
small portion of the take, which comprises a vast array of documents
and reports publicly retrievable but often difficult to find in today's
high-volume, high-speed information flow. Open sources provide vital
information for the policymaker, who today is much better informed than
in the past because of his or her easy and timely access to
information, which, in turn, strengthens a firm demand for ``on-time''
delivery of analysis. Accessing, collecting, and analyzing open-source
information, in short, is a multifaceted challenge that can only be met
with a multi-front response or strategy that engages both people and
technology in innovative ways.
During the Cold War, covering the globe for the IC was largely a
Soviet-centric enterprise. The Soviet Union was the single-strategic
threat we faced. Today, global coverage entails the responsibility to
assess diverse, complex, and dispersed threats around the world. In
addition to traditional intelligence concerns--such as the future of
Russia and China; international terrorism, narcotics, and proliferation
of weapons of mass effect; and political turmoil in Indonesia or civil
conflicts in Africa--the new environment features many nontraditional
missions. The IC now provides intelligence about peacekeeping
operations, humanitarian assistance, sanctions monitoring, information
warfare, and threats to our space systems. Many of these missions are
operationally focused, requiring growing proportions of the analytic
and collection work force to function in an ad hoc crisis mode.
Clandestinely derived intelligence is as valuable as ever, but, in
my recent experience, open source information now dominates the
universe of the intelligence analyst, a fact that is unlikely to change
for the foreseeable future. The revolution in information technology
and telecommunications has fundamentally transformed the globe that the
IC covers, the services that it provides to consumers, and the
workplace in which its people function. While it is as important as
ever to protect our sensitive sources and methods, it is more important
than in the past to integrate the best information from all sources--
including unclassified--into IC analysis.
Information abounds. Twenty years ago, current and
reliable information on the Soviet Union, Central Asia, and
other corners of the world was scarce, foreign newspapers took
weeks to arrive at an analyst's desk, and policymakers were
willing to wait days or even weeks for a paper on their issues.
Today, the information is here and now in abundance,
policymakers want it in real time, and intelligence
requirements are much sharper and more time sensitive. The
Washington-based analyst can send a message and get a response
from a post in a remote country faster than it used to take to
exchange notes by pneumatic tube with counterparts in the same
IC building. Technology may make our jobs easier, but it does
not feel that way. We are all working much harder.
Governments are losing control. Governments have less
and less capacity to control information flows. International
terrorists, narcotraffickers, organized crime groups, and
weapons proliferators are taking advantage of the new
technologies, bypassing governments or seeking to undermine
them when governments try to block their illegal activities. As
al-Qa'ida demonstrated in planning 9/11, tech-savvy terrorists
are adept at exploiting our technology for their nefarious
purposes. Non-state actors are likely to be using laptop
computers, establishing their own Web sites, and using
sophisticated encryption. In the years ahead, these enhanced
capabilities will raise the profile of transnational issues
that are already high on the IC agenda. In this environment,
open-source information will continue to be essential to our
understanding of these groups and how they operate.
Solutions
Technology is a major part of the answer to the magnitude of the
open-source challenge, but it is no substitute for the other essential
component: skilled people. The IC must provide the analytic tools
needed to assess and exploit the vast amount of information available,
and it must invest more in people, whose expertise is crucial for
prioritizing, interpreting, and analyzing this information. The greater
the volume of information to assess, the stronger must be the expertise
to evaluate it. In this context, DHS, as a top priority, must recruit
and retain the necessary in-house expertise and develop the external
partnerships to speak authoritatively on threats to the homeland--as
the Homeland Security Act of 2002 requires of it.
Today, cognitive analytic tools are continuously under development
in both the private sector and the government to facilitate management
of the information glut, enhancing the IC's ability to filter, search
and prioritize potentially overwhelming volumes of information. These
tools do not discriminate between classified and unclassified
information. They help the analyst to draw the best information from
all sources into an integrated, high-quality analytic product.
Clustering lets analysts exploit the most
useful data sets first, as well as to recognize
meaningful patterns and relationships, thereby helping
the IC perform its warning function.
Link Analysis helps to establish relationships
between a known problem and known actors and to detect
patterns of activities that warrant particular
attention.
Time-series analysis can enable analysts to
track actions over time so that unusual patterns of
activity can be identified.
Visualization and Animation allow analysts and
consumers to see extensive and complex data laid out in
dynamic and easily understandable formats and models.
Automated database population is designed to
free analysts from the tedious and time-consuming
function of manually inputting information into
databases, reducing the potential for errors and
inconsistencies.
One of the strongest and most consistent demands from IC analysts
is ability to search and exploit both classified and unclassified
information from a single workstation. The Community is making progress
on this. It also is developing better ways to standardize information
and tag it using metadata--or reference information--to make it easier
to search, structure, and enter information into data bases.
Geospatial intelligence provides an excellent example of how
today's skilled analysts--the same analysts in one place or on one
team--are routinely integrating both classified and unclassified
information in their path-breaking work. They take high-quality
orthorectified (three dimensional to scale) imagery and superimpose on
it both classified intelligence and vital unclassified information,
which creates a complete picture of a terrain, site, facility, or
densely populated urban area. Such an integrated picture is
operationally useful as well as informative for all consumers.
A good example of the all-source analytic process is the National
Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2015 project of 2001 and its
follow-up this year, Mapping the Global Future, which resulted from
months of close collaboration between IC analysts and experts from the
USG, academia, and the private sector. The disposition of outside
experts to collaborate with the IC has never been greater. This
collaboration or integration of effort should be encouraged as a model
for dealing with the complex issues on today's intelligence agenda. The
goal, again, is to deliver the best product from all sources.
IA's Future
The US Intelligence Community today is much more than an espionage
service. It constitutes the world's biggest and most powerful
information-based business, collecting and analyzing both clandestinely
derived and open-source information. To do its job well, the IC should
be on the leading edge of open-source exploitation so that it will have
the best information to inform its analysis and so that it can
surgically target our clandestine collection systems on critical
information gaps. The IC's comparative advantage over other
information-based enterprises is that its clandestine collection has
the potential to add significant value to all source-analysis--to the
benefit of US National Security.
To function effectively as a member of today's IC, an agency must
play fully in both the classified and unclassified arenas. This is not
a numbers game. It is about having adequate facilities, infrastructure,
analytic expertise, IC connectivity, and authority to fully support the
agency's mission. The Department of Homeland Security has a vital
mission to protect America. It should have its own intelligence
organization capable of supporting that mission.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you very much, Dr. Gannon.
Now, the Chair recognizes Mr. Jardines.
STATEMENT OF ELIOT JARDINES, PRESIDENT, OPEN SOURCE PUBLISHING,
INC.
Mr. Jardines. Good morning, Chairman Simmons, Congresswoman
Lofgren, members of the subcommittee. I thank you for the
opportunity to participate in this hearing.
I am Eliot Jardines, president of Open Source Publishing, a
private firm that does open source exploitation support for the
U.S. government.
Over the past 14 years, my career as an open-source
intelligence practitioner has provided me with an opportunity
to understand the significant contributions which the open-
source intelligence discipline, or OSINT, can bring to the
Department of Homeland Security.
From Peal Harbor to the September 11 terrorist attacks,
intelligence failures have largely resulted not from a lack of
information but rather from an inability to disseminate that
information effectively.
In looking at the nature of the first responder community,
it is apparent that timeliness and flexibility of open-source
intelligence is particularly useful. Due to its unclassified
nature, OSINT can be shared extensively without compromising
national security.
Not only can these OSINT products be disseminated to
inspectors at a port of entry, they can also be provided to
state and local law enforcement. In fact, OSINT products could
be disseminated to the full complement of first responders,
such as fire fighters, EMTs, university police departments,
hospitals and even private security firms.
Intelligence support to the homeland security community
below the federal level is largely non-existent due to
classification issues. The way I see it, either we provide top-
secret security clearances to all chiefs of police, fire chiefs
and sheriffs in the country or we provide them with some means
of gaining access to open-source information.
In the event, God forbid, of another terrorist attack, it
is these local responders who will be called upon to put their
lives on the line. Do we not owe it to them to at least provide
them some form of intelligence support?
How do we go about providing this support? First of all,
OSINT must be effectively incorporated into the DHS all-source
analysis process. This can only be achieved by changing the
prevailing mindset that classification is a measure of quality.
The highly classified intelligence report is no better or more
important than one of lower classification. Its classification
is only indicative of the degree of damage done to national
security should sources and methods be compromised.
Secondly, we must establish OSINT as an equal partner with
the traditional intelligence discipline. This is achieved by
providing the infrastructure necessary to acquire, process,
analyze and disseminate open-source intelligence. It is
essential that a formalized means exists for the exploitation
of OSINT.
The third recommendation is to develop a cadre of highly
skilled open-source analysts and library professionals to
provide tailored open-source intelligence support at DHS.
Fourthly, in order to effectively incorporate OSINT into
the DHS analytical process, we must redefine that process. The
traditional linear intelligence cycle is more a manifestation
of bureaucratic structure than a description of the open-source
exploitation process.
In its recent book entitled, ``Intelligence Analysis: A
Target-centric Approach,'' Dr. Robert Clark proposes a more
target-centric, iterative and collaborative approach which
would be far more effective than our current traditional
intelligence cycle.
Lastly, OSINT should establish a streamlined contracting
process to enable cost-effective outsourcing of OSINT
requirements and commercial content procurement.
The effective dissemination of open-source intelligence by
DHS is also essential to our national security. One
recommendation is to provide all DHS entities with access to
the Open-Source Information System, or OSIS. Operating at the
``for official use only'' level, OSIS has provided the
intelligence community with access to open-source analytical
products and commercial content since 1994. Rather than
reinventing the wheel with a separate system, DHS should be
encouraged to use this network and explore the possibility of
OSIS accounts for all police and fire chiefs.
I understand the subcommittee has particular interest in
examining whether the Department should establish its own open-
source intelligence agency. Both the 9/11 Commission and the
Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission have recommended that
the Director of National Intelligence consider establishing an
OSINT agency or center. I believe it would be a mistake for DHS
to rely solely on a DNI center to fulfill its OSINT
requirements. DHS should establish its own OSINT agency or
center to ensure that its unique needs are met.
In summation, I believe open-source exploitation can
provide timely, accurate and actionable intelligence for the
Department of Homeland Security, most importantly, at minimal
cost.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Jardines follows:]
Prepared Statement of Eliot A. Jardines
Chairman Simmons, Congresswoman Lofgren, and members of the
Subcommittee, I thank you for the opportunity to participate in this
hearing. I am Eliot Jardines, President of Open Source Publishing,
Incorporated, a private firm which specializes in providing open source
intelligence support to the US military, the intelligence community and
federal law enforcement. Open Source Publishing has provided open
source exploitation, analysis and training for federal agencies since
its inception in 1996.
Over the past fourteen years, my career as an open source
intelligence practitioner and educator has provided me with an
opportunity to understand the significant contributions which the open
source intelligence discipline, or OSINT, can bring to the all-source
intelligence analysis process. With that said, I am also keenly aware
of the limitations of this discipline which should not be viewed as a
panacea, but rather a highly effective component of the intelligence
toolkit.
The Value of OSINT for Homeland Security
From Peal Harbor to the September 11th terrorist attacks,
intelligence failures have largely resulted not from a lack of
information, but rather the inability to effectively disseminate that
information or intelligence. In looking at the nature of the homeland
security and first responder communities, it is apparent that open
source intelligence is particularly useful. Due to its unclassified
nature, OSINT can be shared extensively without compromising national
security.
The flexibility and timeliness of open source intelligence is
particularly salient for the Department of Homeland Security because it
provides a means by which critical intelligence can be acquired and
disseminated without the encumbrances imposed by classification. As an
example, during the mid-1990s I was a member of a team which conducted
an assessment of how the US Customs Service collected, analyzed and
disseminated intelligence. We soon discovered that it was incredibly
difficult to disseminate classified information to the tactical level.
Highly classified messages or analytical products underwent a
sanitation process which tended to remove important details. The end
result was intelligence reports which were too general or broad to be
of much use. An attempt to disseminate highly classified documents down
to the port of entry level, resulted in the discovery that few if any
personnel at that level had the requisite clearances. In other
instances, the necessary security infrastructure was unavailable. In
one memorable instance, we discovered that a port of entry was able to
receive classified faxes, but did not have approved facilities for
storage of classified data. The net result was that the classified fax
was generally left off. In the rare instances classified faxes were
received, they were promptly shredded as no approved means of
classified storage was available. With that said, the Customs Service,
now the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, has made dramatic
improvements regarding disseminating intelligence. The CPB's Office of
Intelligence under the leadership of Roy Surrett, has in many ways set
the standard for responsive intelligence support.
However, given the largely unclassified nature of open source
intelligence products, the aforementioned issues of clearances and
security infrastructure are irrelevant. Not only can these OSINT
products be disseminated to inspectors at a port of entry, they can
also be provided to state and local law enforcement. In fact, OSINT
products could be disseminated to the full compliment of first
responders such as firefighters, EMTs, university police departments,
hospitals and private security firms. Consider for a moment what a
paradigm shift that would represent.
Intelligence community support to the homeland security community
below the federal level is largely non-existent due to classification
issues. The way I see it, either we provide Top Secret security
clearances and the necessary communications and storage capabilities
for every single chief of police, sheriff and fire chief in the
country, or we invest a far smaller amount to establish a robust OSINT
capability. In the event, God-forbid, of another terrorist attack upon
the homeland, it will be the local first responders who will be called
upon to put their lives on the line. Do we not owe it to them to at
least provide some intelligence support?
Integrating OSINT into the DHS analytical process
How then, do we go about providing this open source intelligence
support? First of all, OSINT must be effectively incorporated into the
DHS all-source analysis process. This can only be achieved by changing
the prevailing mindset that classification is a measure of quality. A
highly classified intelligence report is no better or more important
than one of lower classification, it is only indicative of the degree
of damage done to national security should its inherent sources and
methods be compromised.
Secondly, we must establish OSINT as an equal partner with human
intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery
intelligence (IMINT) and measurement and signatures intelligence
(MASINT). This is achieved by providing the infrastructure necessary to
acquire, process, analyze and disseminate open source intelligence. It
is essential that a formalized means exist for the exploitation of
OSINT. Of particular importance is the establishment of an open source
intelligence requirements management system. Having a requirements
management system in place would allow DHS to identify its standing and
ad hoc intelligence collection requirements, as well as what entity or
activity would be responsible for fulfilling those needs.
For too long, open source exploitation has been delegated as merely
an additional duty for intelligence analysts. This is simply a
ridiculous notion. No one would seriously propose that intelligence
analysts be required to collect their own signals or imagery
intelligence. However, that is precisely what we do with open source
intelligence. The third recommendation for effective integration of
OSINT, is to develop a cadre of highly skilled open source analysts and
library professionals to work along side traditional intelligence
analysts in order to provide tailored OSINT support to the DHS
analytical process. Likewise, these analysts could fulfill an analyst
helpdesk function fulfilling ad hoc requirements for DHS entities and
the first responder community. It is vital that these OSINT positions
be given the importance they deserve and that they not devolve into
convenient placeholders for personnel awaiting security clearances.
Fourthly, in order to effectively incorporate OSINT into the DHS
analytical process, we must redefine that process. We must begin by
redefining the traditional linear intelligence cycle which is more a
manifestation of the bureaucratic structure of the intelligence
community than a description of the intelligence exploitation process.
In his recent seminal work on the issue, Intelligence Analysis: A
Target Centric Approach Dr. Robert M. Clark describes the traditional
intelligence cycle as one that, ``defines an antisocial series of steps
that constrains the flow of information. It separates collectors from
processors from analysts and too often results in ``throwing
information over the wall' to become the next person's responsibility.
Everyone neatly avoids responsibility for the quality of the final
product. Because this compartmentalized process results in formalized
and relatively inflexible requirements at each stage, it is more
predictable and therefore more vulnerable to an opponent's
countermeasures.'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Clark, Robert M. (2004). Intelligence Analysis: A Target-
Centric Approach. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Clark goes on to propose a more target-centric, iterative and
collaborative approach which is far more effective than the traditional
intelligence cycle. In Clark's target-centric approach, the process is
a resilient one in which collectors, analysts and customers are
integral and accountable. Redefining the analytical process is a
lengthy discussion which exceeds the time constraints of this hearing.
I would however, commend Dr. Clark's book to the Subcommittee for
further consideration.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T4962.001
The final way to integrate OSINT into analytical activities at DHS
is to establish a streamlined and specialized contracting process to
enable outsourcing of OSINT requirements and commercial content
procurement. Centralizing the procurement of commercial content such as
databases, periodicals or commercial imagery for all of DHS would
result in a dramatic cost savings which could in turn, be used to fund
further OSINT efforts or content procurement. While centralizing
content procurement, DHS must ensure the process is flexible and
responsive enough to meet time sensitive or ``unusual'' requirements.
At Open Source Publishing, we are frequently asked by our customers
to acquire individual books or maps which typically do not exceed
$50.00 in cost. The conventional government procurement process for
such small purchases requires a disproportionate outlay of personnel
resources and the death of innumerable trees. In particular, the
restrictions and paperwork surrounding the use of government credit
cards (IMPAC cards) deserves much attention. Very useful in supporting
OSINT efforts would be the establishment of a DHS blanket purchase
agreement (BPA) to allow any DHS entity to acquire OSINT related
products and services in a simple and cost effective manner.
If such a blanket purchase agreement becomes reality, particular
care should be given to insure that the standard practice among the
large government contractors of charging exorbitant pass-through fees
be kept to a minimum. One particularly effective approach is to award
the BPA to a number of prime contractors who would be required to
disclose all pass-through percentages and ``management fees'' upfront
to subcontractors interested in using the contract vehicle. In order to
insure the success of such an effort, it is essential that the all too
common ``raping and pillaging'' by prime contractors be minimized. The
procurement of a $50.00 book should not require a $10.00 pass-through
fee and $200.00 in management and administrative charges by the prime.
Disseminating OSINT
The effective dissemination of open source intelligence within the
Department of Homeland Security and the first responder community is
essential to our national security. As mentioned previously, many
intelligence failures are a result, not of faulty analysis, but rather
the inability to disseminate intelligence or information in a timely
manner. No other department in our government is more reliant on
effective information dissemination to fulfill its mission than DHS.
Therefore, the unclassified nature of open source intelligence greatly
enhances its prospects for wide distribution, and as such should be
regarded as a key within DHS.
One recommendation to assist DHS in improving its OSINT
dissemination efforts, is to provide all DHS entities with access to
the Open Source Information System (OSIS). Operating at the For
Official Use Only level, OSIS has provided the intelligence community
with access to open source analytical products and commercial content
since 1994. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, DHS should be
encouraged to coordinate its efforts with the Intelink Management
Office which manages OSIS. Another recommendation would be to allow all
police and fire chiefs access to the homeland security related
resources on OSIS. This dramatic expansion of access for first
responders can be accomplished by simply leveraging the OSIS network's
existing infrastructure. While additional OSIS funding would be
required, the cost would be dramatically less than creating such a
network from scratch. This arrangement also facilitates collaboration
among the first responder community via the OSIS network's
collaboration tools and training resources, again at little additional
cost.
Should DHS Establish an OSINT Agency?
I understand the Subcommittee has a particular interest in
examining whether the Department should establish its own open source
intelligence agency. Both the 9/11 Commission and the Weapons of Mass
Destruction Commission have recommended that the Director of National
Intelligence consider establishing an OSINT agency or center. It is my
feeling that it would be a mistake for DHS to rely solely on a DNI
OSINT center to fulfill homeland security related OSINT requirements.
While capable of providing some degree of support, the DNI's OSINT
center could not be as responsive to the unique needs of DHS and the
first responder community as a specialized OSINT agency or center would
be.
Indicative of the need for specialized OSINT support, the
Department of Defense's Open Source Council recently recommended the
establishment of a DoD OSINT Program Office to better support the
unique needs of warfighters and Defense decision makers. While in
general I am no fan of establishing new agencies or centers, in this
case the unique requirements of the homeland security community
warrants just such an action. I think just about anyone would agree
that it is a stretch to think that a single OSINT agency or center
could adequately provide for all the needs of such widely divergent
agencies like DHS, DoD and the Department of State.
Conclusion
In summation, I believe open source exploitation can provide
timely, accurate and actionable intelligence to the Department of
Homeland Security as well as the first responder community,
particularly at the state and local level. Effective use of OSINT at
DHS requires first of all, a change of perspective regarding the value
of intelligence--which is not determined by its classification level.
Secondly, it requires viewing OSINT as an equal partner in the all-
source analysis process. Thirdly, OSINT should be conducted by highly
skilled analysts and practitioners, not merely the uncleared. Fourthly,
effective OSINT exploitation requires a complete reevaluation of the
traditional intelligence cycle which is largely ill-suited to the
demands of the Global War on Terror. Lastly, effective OSINT requires a
flexible means of outsourcing and content procurement.
In terms of effective dissemination of OSINT within DHS and the
first responder community, it is imperative that DHS not reinvent the
wheel but rather leverage existing capabilities such as the Open Source
Information System. Finally, it is my belief that the Department of
Homeland Security should establish its own OSINT agency or center to
meet the unique needs of its constituents. I thank the Subcommittee for
its consideration of my testimony.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you very much, Mr. Jardines, for that
very concise and timely presentation. Thank you.
And now the Chair recognizes Joe Onek for his testimony.
STATEMENT OF JOE ONEK, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, OPEN SOCIETY
INSTITUTE
Mr. Onek. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lofgren, members of
the subcommittee, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to
testify this morning.
In recent years, the government's authority and capability
to collect and share open-source information about Americans
has grown enormously. I think we all recognize the potential
benefits of collecting that open-source information in order to
protect our country, but at the same time this collection of
information raises a variety of privacy and civil liberties
issues, and the concerns that it raises is reflected, for
example, in the controversy over section 215 of the Patriot
Act, the so-called library records provision, and to proposals
about administrative subpoenas.
But in my limited time this morning, I would like to focus
on another concern, what I would call a civil rights concern,
and it is that the danger that if our systems work as well as
we hope they will work, the information that the government
gathers and shares will be used in ways that unfairly
discriminate against Muslim Americans.
Although only a miniscule number of Muslim Americans are
involved in any form of terrorism, it is obvious that the
government's expanded information gathering and data mining
systems will focus on Muslim Americans. Even if they do not
single out Muslim Americans directly by name or religious
affiliation, Muslims will appear disproportionately on the
government's computer screens because they are the people who
are most likely, naturally and innocently, to visit or
telephone or send money to places like Pakistan and Iraq.
Inevitably, government officials will learn more about
Muslim Americans than about other Americans. Many Americans,
for example, whether we like it or not, employ undocumented
workers in their homes and businesses. Many Americans do not
fully report their earnings from tips to the IRS. But the
Americans who may be caught doing these things and subject to
prosecution may disproportionately be Muslim.
Similarly, there are millions of persons in the United
States who are violating the immigration laws. Their offenses
range from illegal entry to failure to notify authorities of an
address change. Again, Muslim violators will be caught and
subjected to deportation in far greater percentages than other
violators.
Now, at first blush, there may be seen no problem at all
with prosecuting or deporting persons who have violated the
law, but our nation's legal and moral values require equal
application of the law. When, for example, there are stretches
of highway where virtually everyone exceeds the speed limit, it
is not permissible for the police to stop and ticket only or
primarily those speeders who are African American.
My concern is that the new information gathering and data
mining systems will often deliberately focus on persons who are
likely to be Muslim, and therefore it is necessary to address
the unequal application of the laws that will inevitably
follow.
And I am therefore going to make what I understand is a
provocative proposal. I am going to propose that information
gathered for antiterrorist purposes not be used against
individuals except in proceedings that directly relate to
terrorism or other very, very serious crimes. Unless this
restriction is imposed, criminal and immigration laws will be
disproportionately applied against Muslim Americans. This
unfairness will breed discontent in the Muslim community and
will undermine the fight against terrorism.
It is important both that our country and be seen by the
world as fair to Muslim Americans and that it enlists the full
cooperation of the Muslim community in antiterrorism efforts.
These objectives can only be met if Muslims in this country
believe the government is treating them fairly.
And this proposal does not mean that anybody will be
granted immunity for criminal activity or amnesty. The
government remains free to bring criminal or immigration cases
provided that it does not use information generated by
antiterrorist data mining systems in cases not involving
terrorism or other similar violent crimes or serious crimes.
This limitation may require some segregation of
information, it may impose some burdens on government, but
these burdens are a small price to pay to ensure fairness to
all Americans and to strengthen the fight against terrorism.
And, interestingly, and I will close on this note, and I
think you are familiar with this, the federal government is
currently implementing a somewhat similar immunity program
under the Homeland Security Act. Section 214 of the Act
provides that companies, such as nuclear power plants, that
voluntarily disclose to the government critical infrastructure
information concerning their vulnerabilities to terrorism are
guaranteed that the government will not use that information
against them in any civil action. And this is so even though
the disclosed information may indicate that the company is not
complying with various safety or environmental laws and is thus
subject to severe civil penalties.
Congress made the determination in the Homeland Security
Act that granting companies this limited immunity served
important national security interests, and I believe national
security interests are also served by providing limited use
immunity to people caught up in our antiterrorism data mining
efforts.
Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Onek follows:]
Prepared Statement of Joseph Onek
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lofgren and members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify this
morning on issues related to the government's access to open-source
information.
As the Subcommittee well knows, since 9/11 Congress has enacted
many provisionsz--in the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act and the
Intelligence Reform legislation--authorizing or requiring federal
agencies to collect and share more information about Americans. At the
same time, new technologies are making it easier for government
agencies to gather, store and analyze information. These developments
have raised a variety of concerns.
Many Americans, I believe, have a visceral unease about the fact
that the government has the capacity to gather so much information
about them. That unease explains the powerful opposition to the Defense
Department's Total Information Awareness Program. It also explains the
opposition to section 215 of the Patriot Act--the so-called library
records provision. I . myself agree that section 215 should be amended
as proposed in the SAFE Act to prevent fishing expeditions by
government officials and keep their focus properly on information
relating to agents of a foreign power. I also believe that the
government must do a better job of explaining its information
collecting and sharing practices. Recently, for example, the Department
of Homeland proposed to exempt one of its systems of records from the
requirements of the Privacy Act. Its notices explaining the request
were so opaque that it was difficult to understand what records were
involved and why the exemption was appropriate.
Another development that, according to public opinion polls, is
raising concerns about privacy is the proposal to authorize
administrative subpoenas in national security investigations. The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has reported out legislation
granting the government administrative subpoena power under the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Administrative subpoenas are now
used in many types of investigations, and the government asks why they
shouldn't also be used by the FBI in the fight against terrorism. But,
as I testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the government
ignores some very crucial facts.
First, administrative subpoenas are typically used for discrete
purposes and to obtain limited types of records. But here the subpoenas
would be seeking records relating to foreign intelligence and
terrorism. The range of activities that relate foreign intelligence and
terrorism is enormous and, therefore, there is virtually no limit to
the type of records the FBI will be able to subpoena. The FBI will seek
financial records, employment records, transportation records, medical
records and yes, sometimes, library records. The collection of this
massive array of records creates special problems. Inevitably, FBI
investigations will sweep up sensitive information about innocent, law-
abiding people. How do we assure this information is not abused? The
FBI will also sweep up information about people who have nothing
whatsoever to do with terrorism, but who may have committed other
infractions, both minor and major. What will the FBI do with this
information? These are not problems that arise with the ordinary use of
administrative subpoenas.
There is a second crucial difference between the ordinary use of
administrative subpoenas and the new proposal. In the proposed
legislation, the FBI's subpoenas must be kept completely secret
whenever the FBI says that national security requires non-disclosure.
This means that a record holder who receives a subpoena that is
overbroad or impinges on first amendment rights will not be able to
complain to the press, Congress or the public.
This is not an insignificant disadvantage. Just last year, a
federal prosecutor in Iowa served grand jury subpoenas on Drake
University and members of the university community in connection with a
peaceful antiwar forum. The university community protested loudly, the
press took up the controversy, and the subpoenas were promptly
withdrawn. This cannot happen when the subpoenas are secret.
If subpoenas covering a vast array of records are going to be
served in secret, there must be additional safeguards. The most obvious
safeguard is prior judicial approval, such as is provided, however
inadequately, in Section 215 of the Patriot Act. We should not permit,
for the first time in our history, the massive use of secret subpoenas
that have not been approved by a judge.
I recognize that the proposed legislation provides record holders
with the opportunity to challenge any subpoena in federal court. But
this opportunity is no substitute for prior judicial approval. Third
party record holders will generally have no incentive to undertake the
burdens of a federal court challenge, and the secrecy provisions
further reduce the likelihood of a challenge. If, for example, a
hospital receives a subpoena for a massive number of medical records
and the subpoena is made public, the medical staff and patient groups
might pressure the hospital to file a challenge. There will be no such
pressure with a secret subpoena. Thus, there will be little judicial
supervision of the FBI's use of secret subpoenas.
The FBI should be required to obtain a court order when it seeks
access to business records. As already noted, I believe the current
standards for issuing such orders, as set forth in Section 215 of the
Patriot Act, should be tightened along the lines suggested by the SAFE
Act. But in any event there must be a requirement for judicial
approval. Such a requirement imposes a salutary discipline on the
government. It forces the government to think through and describe, in
the words of Deputy Attorney General Corney, the ``meaningful, logical
connection between the record sought and the subject of the
investigation.'' If the government believes that obtaining a court
order is too slow in certain circumstances, it should propose special
procedures for emergency situations.
In addition to the general unease about increased government
collection of information, there are some highly specific concerns.
Civil libertarians are worried that the government might misuse the
information it gathers to attack and intimidate critics and opponents.
The memory of J. Edgar Hoover's efforts to destroy the reputation of
Martin Luther King lives on. And, just recently, there have been
allegations that the White House leaked information about a CIA agent
in order to punish her husband for criticizing certain policies of the
Administration.
These privacy and civil liberties concerns deserve serious
attention. But this morning I would like to focus on another concern--
the danger that the government will use the information it gathers and
shares in ways that unfairly discriminate against Muslim Americans.
Although only a miniscule number of Muslim Americans are involved
in any form of terrorism, it is obvious that the government's expanded
information gathering and data-mining systems will focus on Muslim
Americans. Even if such systems do not single out Muslims Americans by
name or religious affiliation, Muslims will appear disproportionately
on the government's computer screens because they are the people most
likely (naturally and innocently) to visit, telephone and send money to
places like Pakistan and Iraq. Inevitably, government officials will
learn more about Muslim Americans than about other Americans. Many
Americans, for example, employ undocumented workers in their homes and
businesses. Many ``harbor'' out of status immigrants (often close
relatives) by giving them a place to stay or finding them an apartment.
Many do not fully report their earnings from tips to the IRS. But the
Americans who will be caught doing these things, and subjected to
prosecution, will disproportionately be Muslim.
Similarly, there are millions of persons in the U.S. who are
violating the immigration laws. Their offenses range from illegal entry
to failing to notify authorities of an address change. Again, Muslim
violators will be caught and subjected to deportation in far greater
percentages than other violators.
At first blush, there may seem to be no problem with prosecuting or
deporting persons who have violated the law. But our nation's legal and
moral values require equal application of the laws. When, for example,
there are stretches of highway where virtually everyone exceeds the
speed limit, it is not permissible for the police to stop and ticket
only (or primarily) those speeders who are black. The new information
gathering and data-mining systems will often deliberately focus on
persons who are likely to be Muslims, and therefore it is necessary to
address the unequal application of the laws that will inevitably
follow.
I propose, therefore, that information gathered for anti-terrorist
purposes not be used against individuals except in proceedings that
directly relate to terrorism or to other violent crimes. Unless this
restriction is imposed, criminal and immigration laws will be
disproportionately applied against Muslim Americans. This unfairness
will breed discontent in the Muslim community and undermine the fight
against terrorism. It is important both that our country is seen by the
world as fair to Muslim Americans and that it enlist the full
cooperation of the American Muslim community in anti-terrorist efforts.
These objectives can only be met if Muslims in this country believe the
government is treating them fairly.
This proposal does not mean that anyone will be granted immunity
for criminal activity or amnesty for immigration violations. The
government remains free to bring criminal or immigration cases against
Muslim Americans, provided that it does not use information generated
by anti-terrorist data-mining systems in cases not involving terrorism
or violent crime. This limitation will require some segregation of
information and impose some burdens on the government. But these
burdens are a small price to pay to ensure fairness to all Americans
and strengthen the fight against terrorism.
Interestingly enough, the federal government is currently
implementing a somewhat similar immunity program in accordance with the
Homeland Security Act of 2002. Section 214 of the Act provides that
companies such as nuclear power plants that voluntarily disclose to the
government critical infrastructure information concerning their
vulnerabilities to terrorism are guaranteed that the government will
not use that information against them in any civil action. This is so
even though the disclosed information may indicate that the company is
not complying with various laws regulating safety or the environment
and is thus subject to severe civil penalties. Congress made the
determination in the Homeland Security Act that granting companies this
limited use immunity served important national security interests. As I
have argued, national security interests are also served by providing
limited use immunity to people caught up in our anti-terrorism data-
mining efforts.
Whether or not you agree with my analysis, I am sure you do agree
that the government's increasing authority and capacity to gather
information about Americans requires congressional attention. Recently,
the President named his nominees and appointees to the new Privacy and
Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and I hope the Board will soon address
the questions I have raised this morning. But, in the end, it is up to
Congress to assure that the government obtains the intelligence it
needs without violating the civil liberties and civil rights of the
American people. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you very much.
I would like to make a comment and then I have a couple of
questions, and my colleagues will all have questions as well.
It is my understanding from reading Mr. Jardines testimony
that his recommendation is not unlike the recommendations that
we had in the recent weapons of mass destruction report that
there be somewhere in our government a center of excellence for
open-source intelligence. In the case of the WMD report, it
would be at the Central Intelligence Agency, but I think
history has shown that they have not responded to that
opportunity, at least in years past.
I guess my view is that such a center of excellence could
reasonably be located with the Department of Homeland Security
for several reasons. One, it could be incredibly useful in
their infrastructure vulnerability reports because much of that
information is publicly available from either state or local
entities or private enterprises here in the United States.
But, secondly, by creating such a center of excellence, you
develop expertise within the discipline and then those
individuals who are expert in the discipline can be placed out
in the intelligence community in all-source analysis
facilities, just as a photo interpretation, for example, has a
center of excellence at NPIC, signals intelligence has a center
of excellence at the National Security Agency, and at various
times in our history the clandestine service of the CIA has
been a center of excellence for human-source intelligence.
So it seems to me that there is some value in that model.
But let me raise what I think is a fundamental question
when it comes to open source. I have here aerial photographs of
the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility in Iran. These are
incredibly detailed photographs. Normally, you would not see
these except in a classified environment. But in the case of
these photographs, they were taken by the Space Imaging
Organization, which is an open-source organization.
The value of these open-source products is that if there is
an issue relative to Iran and its nuclear activities, you can
share these photographs and you can share these images with the
American people. So their government is not simply making
statements and then saying, ``Trust me, we have the secret
information that shows this to be the case.'' You can actually
show the American people what it is that concerns us around the
world and possibly or potentially show the American people what
concerns us here.
Dr. Gannon made a very interesting statement, that
governments are losing control. In other words, governments are
no longer the sole proprietors of information collection and
analysis. And I think that is a good thing. I think that is
good for democracy. I think that brings more people into the
process, and I would be interested if any of our three
witnesses would wish to comment on that analysis.
Mr. Jardines. Well, I guess as a practitioner in the open-
source arena and as someone who has been at the tail end,
someone who has needed that open-source material and for most
of my 10 years in the military, both on active duty and in the
reserves, I was outside the Washington Beltway. In D.C., we
have great resources at all levels of classification, but as
you move out beyond that boundary, those resources dry up
pretty quickly. And I think that the idea of setting up an
OSINT center that would drive the acquisition of open-source
information and centralize that is an important model.
In part, in the past, with the Community Open-Source
Program Office, it was not successful primarily because it
really was not viewed by the rest of the community as a
community entity. The leadership and most of the infrastructure
was the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, and it simply
was not accepted as a communitywide effort.
Given that the Department of Homeland Security is a fairly
new infrastructure entity within the intelligence community, I
think a lot of those long-standing antagonisms between various
intel agencies do not exist, and I think it would be far better
received if an OSINT center were in the Department of Homeland
Security.
Mr. Onek. Let me just comment. In a related point, the
chairman pointed out the importance of open-source information,
and obviously people in a community, for example, have
tremendous interest in information about, let's say, a nearby
nuclear power plant or a nearby chemical plant, and they
obviously are concerned with safety and environmental factors,
and in general I think they deserve to know as much as possible
in order to assess the safety of their neighbor, of their
neighboring entity.
Now, of course, since 9/11, there has been concern that
that same information, which is useful to the community, might
also be useful to terrorists. So we have had to look more
closely at it, and I am not suggesting that that is wrong but
we have to make sure that we do not overdue it; that is, we do
not overclassify and we do not make it impossible for people in
the community who have an obvious need to understand facilities
in their backyard do not get a chance to see information.
And so that is I think the dilemma that you face as you try
to make more and more information or keep more and more
information open source, but I do believe that it is a dilemma
that we should meet head on and try to err whenever we can on
the side of openness.
Dr. Gannon. I am just sort of speaking for the working
analyst. If I were to take either the image you showed me or
other imagery and actually take orthorectified imagery, which
can be made into three-dimensional presentation, there is a
capability really to have accuracy with regard to elevations
and setbacks. For the homeland security purposes, we can do an
urban area where actually you will have an accurate sense of
actually how high things are, what the line of sight is, what
the line of fire is.
Tremendous capability there, but in order to build those
kinds of models, which are extremely useful not just to inform
policymakers but also for operational reasons, the analyst
today sits in a classified environment with superb imagery. You
can take the classified information we have and put it in that
to add to that model, but, invariably, the analyst is also
forced to get a lot of unclassified information to finish it.
So my single point I want to keep making here is I think
the intelligence world today is about integrating the
classified and unclassified information into a superior product
for the benefit of our country.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you very much.
Ms. Lofgren?
Ms. Lofgren. Thank you.
I think, clearly, we are already making use of open-source
information, but as I was listening to the testimony I was
recalling the debate about 30 years ago about what should be
collected by the government and what should not be, and there
was a discussion at that time about whether police departments
should be allowed to keep files that basically consisted of
newspaper clippings. And I thought at the time, well, if it is
in the newspaper, anybody can read it, what is the problem with
that? And that was, I thought, a sound view.
But as technology has moved forward, the ability to compile
and amass and integrate information has changed the whole
dynamic of what can be found out about people, and I do not
know that there is an obvious answer to that issue, but I think
we need to spend some time sorting through that, because
Americans really have a very strong sense of, ``Leave me alone.
My private life is my private life. I should have the right to
that.'' That is a very American attitude, and I think it is
that attitude that fuels objection to the Matrix Program and to
other programs. So I think we need to think through how this
open-source dilemma or opportunity meshes with that.
The issue of discrimination has been raised, and I think
that is a serious one, and we need also to prospectively think
about that.
And, finally, we need to think about the implications of
collecting data that is out in the open, amassing it and then
using it for a purpose that is not to protect Americans from
terrorism but to prosecute in the criminal arena.
And if you think about Americans are starting to understand
what is out there. Every time you buy something, there are
cameras on every corner, there are cameras at every stop light,
every time you go on your fast pass, there is information
created. I mean, ID tags are going to connect where you go and
what you buy. It is all out there in the open to the point
where you could know what every American is doing most of the
time. You add that in with the satellite imagery that is
available. I mean, Google now has a program where you can
really see what is going on place by place.
And the question I have really for each of the witnesses
is, what recommendations do each of you have for how we might
put procedures in place that would be respectful to the privacy
expectations of Americans, what procedures we might consider to
avoid the discriminatory impact from the compilation and
amassing of this information and also what procedures should we
consider putting in place that would avoid whatever intrusions
exist being used for a more mundane purpose as opposed to
protect the nation from terrorism purpose, really to avoid
handing on a platter to a police department for a garden
variety criminal prosecution?
I wonder if you have thoughts, each of you, on those
questions.
Mr. Onek. Well, I certainly have some thoughts, which I
gave. I really think that when you look at it there are really
two ways. One is, are there going to be or should there be
certain limitations on the collection side, on the front end?
And that I think is what the current debate about section 215
of the Patriot Act or the I think forthcoming debate about
administrative subpoenas is about. What can you collect? How do
you make sure that the government is not engaging in fishing
expeditions and so on?
And then there is, I guess, what I was trying to speak
about earlier, the backend. After you have collected the
information, after you have determined that certain information
should be collected and you have collected it, are there any
protections you can put on it? First of all, can you make sure,
and this is more mundane but important, can you make sure that
only the right people have access to it within the government?
And there, there are technological fixes, including audit
trails and so on which can make sure that unauthorized people
for their own purposes do not get access to the information.
And that I think we can do, and that is probably not
controversial.
Then you get to the more difficult issue is how do you
assure that the information is not misused, that it is not
misused, for example, by governments to attack political
opponents, as in the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Martin Luther
King, or that it is not used in a way that, although maybe
people do not intend it, ends up being like selective
enforcement or discriminatory. And I think we do have to, and
which is the reason I did raise it this morning, I do think we
have to begin to think about that last issue.
I think it is very hard to do, frankly, and I have talking
to law enforcement people. I am not suggesting it is easy, but
I do think it is necessary to try to do if we are going to be
true to our values and if we are going to show in good faith to
Muslim Americans here and to the world that we are trying to
differentiate between terrorists and Muslims, and that was the
point of my oral testimony today.
Ms. Lofgren. I know time is short but if Dr. Gannon or Mr.
Jardines have comments, I would--
Dr. Gannon. I have a quick comment. I started my
intelligence career in 1997 in the shadow of the Church-Pike
hearings, and I was instructed very clearly that information
from any source, open or clandestine, that dealt with U.S.
citizens we did not deal with it. There were very clear
policies about reporting on and analysis of issues involving
U.S. citizens, and it was not just a matter of clear policies.
I believe I was held accountable for those polices, and I also
believed that my bosses, my leaders were being held accountable
for them.
So the point I would make to you in terms of
recommendations, I think this does have to become a leadership
and accountability issue that is distributed throughout the
intelligence business and, again, not just isolated in some
unit that is deemed to have the responsibility for this. I
think it really does have to--it is like security itself: The
protection of U.S. citizens and information involving them has
to be the business of every analyst and every collector in the
business. And I think that can be done, I think it was done
throughout my career.
Mr. Jardines. If I could just add a couple comments here. I
would like to clarify what we are talking about. Open-source
intelligence is defined as publicly available information. I
keep hearing collection from my colleague. Open sources are not
collected, they are acquired, which means someone else collects
the information, edits that information and disseminates. The
intelligence community is merely a secondhand user of that
information.
So when the congresswoman was mentioning traffic cameras
and those kind of things, all of those fall outside the scope
of open-source intelligence. Gaining access to those kinds of
cameras or credit reports that would go through the
traditional--
Ms. Lofgren. Right, but if I could clarify my point, that
aggregation and distribution, because of technology, is already
occurring. And so we are at a point where if we set policies,
we can actually have a very large impact. Google is in my
district and the googlization of the world is occurring. We are
just at the beginning really of where we are going to be, and
the opportunity to set a framework for how we are going to
respect the privacy rights of Americans is unique, and we ought
not to pass it by.
And I appreciate the gentleman and the chairman's
indulgence for my being over time.
Mr. Simmons. Absolutely. And thank you for the questions.
The Chair now recognizes the distinguished chairman of the
full committee, Mr. Cox.
Mr. Cox. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to focus on the findings and recommendations of the
Silberman-Robb Commission, the Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction. This is a big, fat report that has been available
to us in open source only since March 31, two and a half
months, and I am very, very pleased we have the opportunity in
this subcommittee to dive into a piece of it.
The Silberman-Robb Commission recommended the creation of
an open-source directorate within the CIA.
Dr. Gannon, you in your testimony disagree with that
recommendation. My first question to you is, why? Should there
be an open-source directorate somewhere else at DHS or is this
an inherently bad idea?
Dr. Gannon. Well, I think, in my view, we have a functional
problem; that is, that analysts are not using open source
enough, and we, once again, want a structural solution to a
functional problem.
So my view is that all analysts, all-source analysts or
imagery analysts or signal analysts, they are all now in a
position where they need open-source information to interpret
their own collection contributions. And then analysts, the all-
source analysts, need all-source information more than ever in
order to produce the best analysis that they can.
So it has to be, in my judgment, a distributed model that
gets the technologies out to all those analysts so that they
can avail themselves of the best information, and creating any
kind of a center which is deemed to be the all-source center is
concentrating, not distributing. So I think there is a danger
that you would be creating structure there that in fact would
impede the kind of integration of classified and unclassified
information that I think is absolutely essential and I think is
the trend in the community today.
Mr. Cox. The Silberman-Robb Commission said, ``We believe
part of the problem is analyst resistance; in other words, the
analysts do not want to use open-source information. We believe
that part of the problem is analyst resistance, not lack of
collection.'' And so another of their recommendations was that
we, the United States government, and specifically the CIA,
train some of the new analysts specifically in the uses of open
sources and then, in the parlance of the report, they would be
evange-analysts and go out and encourage other people to get
with it and use new technologies and so on.
This, they believe, would also address another problem, a
more fundamental problem, and that is the intelligence
communities, and here they are not speaking just of the CIA,
surprisingly poor feel for cultural and political issues in the
countries that concern policymakers most. So they see open
source as one means of getting people culturated in the target
areas of their investigation.
Do you agree, Dr. Gannon, with those two assessments:
First, that there is analyst resistance to using open-source
information, and, second, that there is a pervasive problem in
the intelligence community in the form of a lack of feel for
cultural and political issues in the countries that
policymakers are concerned about?
Dr. Gannon. I think the commission did a superb job in its
investigation side. I think some of the recommendations, in
this one especially, I think the commission is going to end up
being human like the rest of us, making an effort to improve
the situation but I do not think recognizing adequately the
baseline in the community right now. I think it is a mixed bag.
All of the analytic programs in the intelligence community
are actually embedded in collection-dominated organizations. So
both the collection perspective, the clandestine collection
perspective, and the security environment does create, I think,
impedance to the aggressive use of open-source information. So
there are some structural issues there to deal with.
But in fact there are many models. I cited the geospatial
imagery, but I did distribute a copy of the Global Trends 2015
exercise where for 18 months our analysts dealt with outside
experts where they asked the question, what are the threats
going to be to the United States, where is the best information
and best expertise to deal with it. And they integrated that
over an 18-month period into the report that is before you.
So I think there are some best business practices for the
use of open source.
But, again, my point is, I want to change the behavior of
those analysts, not change structures. And to change the
behavior I think you have to impose on leadership the
responsibility to get them the technology that will access
open-source information and enable those analysts also through
leadership to get out of the community so they can speak with
folks outside.
I will cite one case when I was chairman of the National
Intelligence Council where we did an estimate on Iran and we
were trying to deal with the political turmoil in Iran, and
when I got the draft before me I realized that we did not have
a single analyst in that intelligence community that had ever
been to Iran.
So what do you do about this? I do not think an open-source
directorate was going to help me there. What we did was we
asked the question, who is in Iran? Who does know the ground
truth there. And we worked with allies and broke tradition and
actually brought some allies to work with us to stimulate the
kind of debate you need with regard to the change that was
taking place there.
So those kinds of things are happening, but my point is, I
want systems and leadership that is going to drive those
analysts to change their behavior so they do use open source
more, and I do not see how the structure of an open-source
directorate does that.
Mr. Cox. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Cox.
The Chair now recognizes the distinguished Ranking Member
of the full committee, Mr. Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I was trying to get some information. I am glad you said
that, Dr. Gannon.
There was an AP story yesterday that one of the heads of
the Counterterrorism Department at the FBI said that you really
did not have to have any experience in terrorism or anything to
run the Department, and I am glad to see somebody at your level
that would say that you absolutely have to have that kind of
experience if you really want to get a good product. And I was
just trying to make sure we get that in the record, because
some of us disagree with that statement.
Mr. Onek, for the last 6 months, there have been security
breaches in a lot of commercial databases--ChoicePoint,
LexisNexis, Time-Warner, CitiGroup and over the weekend
MasterCard--where personal information of hundreds of thousands
of Americans have been compromised.
Should we be concerned that some of this open source, if
not properly safeguarded, can cause a threat to us as a
country?
Mr. Onek. Well, I think that what you are talking about
raises a somewhat different concern, because you are talking
about information that is in the hands of commercial entities
and not in the hands of government, and I think there are
different sets of problems. I think the major concern with the
information that is in the private hands are things like
identity theft and the problems that that pose. And, obviously,
that is a very different concern than the concern you have when
information is in the hands of government.
ChoicePoint cannot prosecute you, it cannot deport you. It
can, I suppose, defame you if it wanted, but it usually does
not have any motive to do it because it is a profit-making not
a political or partisan entity. So I do not wish to make light
about the problems that have just been revealed about the lack
of security, because I know the problems that they can cause
for individuals, and it can happen to any of us at any moment,
but I do think that the issue of government information is a
different issue and I think ultimately a more serious issue.
Mr. Thompson. Well, Mr. Jardines, you are one of those
private folk who gather information that sometimes can, for
whatever reason, become compromised. What safeguards have you
as a profession instituted so that this information you gather
is not falling into the hands of potential terrorists or what
have you?
Mr. Jardines. In general, I cannot speak for the overall
industry but in terms of what we at Open Source Publishing do,
we maintain systems with robust security features. Our focus is
primarily foreign intelligence issues, so we do not focus that
much on U.S. persons information. But it certainly is a real
issue.
As someone who knows just how much information is publicly
available out there, it scares me to death what is out there,
but the reality is this is something that if it is truly open-
source information, what we do is the same thing that any
member of the general public could do.
Does it bother me that you can go to Google and type in my
telephone number and pull up my address and a map to my house
and a picture of my house? Yes, it does. Is there anything I
can do about that? I do not think so. If the committee would
like to do something about that, that would be wonderful.
But at this point, I feel like we are arguing--it is the
same as arguing, ``Gee, the roads are publicly available and
there is the threat of some level of abuse by the fire and
police departments, so therefore we need to regulate how the
fire and police departments drive their vehicles on our public
roads. The reality is the information is already out there. It
is not being collected by the government; it is already out
there.
And so while I certainly, as an Hispanic, am very, very
sensitive to the issue of profiling, there are steps in place
and if we need to add some sort of civilian oversight board,
then that is great. But my biggest concern is for that police
chief or that fire chief who has to respond to these kind of
events should have some degree of foreknowledge about what the
possible risks are to him, and at this point we have decided,
well, we cannot give him a clearance so let's just ignore him
completely.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
Lungren.
Mr. Lungren. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I have got to take some of my time responding to some of
the bankshot criticism of section 215, which of course is not
the subject of this hearing but there has been some things said
on the record that at least I have to respond to.
Let's at least make clear what we are talking about in
section 215 of the Patriot Act. It requires a federal judge to
find that the requested records are sought for. That is the
relevancy standard. For an authorized investigation to obtain
foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States
person or protect against international terrorism or
clandestine intelligence activities. Some of us believe this
involves greater judicial oversight than a grand jury subpoena
where a grand jury subpoena is typically issued without any
prior involvement by a judge.
Section 215 orders are also subject to greater
congressional oversight than our grand jury subpoenas.
Statutorily, every 6 months, the AG must fully inform the House
and Senate Intelligence Committees concerning all requests for
the production of tangible things, whether from library or
anyplace else. There is no comparable provision for the
oversight of grand jury subpoenas.
I am also informed that another section of the law requires
informing the Judiciary Committees of the House and the Senate.
There is also specific language in section 215 which provides
that an investigation under this section shall ``not be
conducted of a United States person solely on the basis of
activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States.''
I bring this up only because I keep hearing a recitation of
criticism of section 215, and we ought to at least know what it
is we are talking about, and, unfortunately, that is not the
subject of this hearing and we do not have the time to go into
it, but I needed to take some of my 5 minutes to at least put
that on the record.
This is serious business, I know we all understand that,
but it also shows that the proper regulation against abuses is
the oversight by the Congress. That is why the statute is set
up. The Judiciary Committee has had 12 hearings thus far. We
have submitted hundreds of questions, written questions, to
which we have received responses from the Justice Department.
And in the area of collection or utilization of open-source
documents, as in anything else, the proper place to make sure
it is not abuse is right here, the Congress. That is why some
of us think that the oversight that we are conducting is
appropriate, necessary and ought to be even more robust than it
has been in the past.
I would like now to ask a question of Dr. Gannon. This goes
to the question of changing the culture and so forth.
Intelligence communities are somewhat insular, you admit. It is
difficult to change that culture. And what I would like to know
is whether or not when going to open-source data, do we need to
ensure that there is a possible governmental/private
partnership? That is, will we run the risk that when we look to
open sourcing that the intelligence community is going to
create its own matrix, its own way of getting it, rather than
take advantage of those private sector operations that are
already out there mining this information?
And are these private organizations--private industry,
academic institutions, and so forth--sufficiently capable of
processing that open-source information in such a way that they
can give it to the intelligence community so those analysts can
do their work?
Dr. Gannon. I do think reliance on those organizations is
inadequate for the intelligence community. I think that the
system works best when there is a real partnership, just as you
are suggesting, between the analyst dealing with the classified
world and then the open-source world where they tackle a
problem together so that they are developing analysis that is
continuously integrating the classified with the unclassified.
And I will assert, in my four years as chairman of the
National Intelligence Council, their willingness to disposition
of outside sources of expertise, and this means everybody from
Wall Street to the aerospace industry to work with the
intelligence community has never been more positive.
I was never turned down by anyone, and usually the reason I
asked them was that we sat down and said, ``Who has got the
best answer to this question?'' Even on something like the
annual report on the ballistic missile threat, we discovered
that while a lot of that did rely on clandestine collections,
in fact we could not do some of the technical analysis without
going to the aerospace industry, and some of the economic
analysis we needed to go to academia.
So when we went out with a problem to the outside, we were
able to develop the kind of partnerships. And when you work
with them, as we did in Global 2015 over 18 months, you develop
sustainable kinds of partnerships.
I think the outside world there is a distrust of the
intelligence community that can be broken down if you actually
are able to show your partners the results of what you are
doing. There is always a suspicion that when we ask for
information the door slams and they never understand how it is
used. And the private sector does not like to provide
information on that basis. I think the community has to
recognize we are in a new environment and we do have to have
policies that allow us to share in a back and forth manner more
than we have.
Clearly, it is a partnership, but I think it is a
partnership that begins at the very beginning of tackling
serious national security issues. It is not something where you
do yours and they do theirs and then you join at some place
down the road.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Etheridge.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here.
As we talk about open-source gathering data, I think you
heard from the committee the concerns as we gather that data
really is in the minds of the public what we gather, from what
sources, and certainly there is a risk environment out there
today with all the sources we can pull it in from, especially
as we look at open source.
My question for each of you, as we look at the blurring of
the line, especially when you are looking at open source versus
the investigation of law enforcement, Mr. Onek you raised the
issue of intelligence investigation, which does not have the
same constraints, of course, as the legal law enforcement.
And, Dr. Gannon, you touched on the issue that the CIA
outside the United States if American citizens happens to be
involved, that is off base.
My question would be, as we view this, the issue of mining
data. Basically, as you start to pull it in, and we have
alluded to the fact that we may have to have constraints, talk
a little bit more about this. Because as you start to pull in
open source versus the other, eventually you get to the point
where it gets blended, and then you have got the real problem
of trying to separate what is what as it relates to moving
forward and moving this data.
And I think this is where the American people really have
some concerns, but at the same time we want to make sure we
have the right data as it relates to protecting the American
people from terrorism.
Mr. Jardines. Well, the intelligence community already has
a number of constraints on it with regard to open-source
information. One item I would say is, unfortunately, we are not
blending open-source information with the all-source analysis
process. The Silberman-Robb Commission mentioned that analysts
were resistant to use open-source information. What the
Commission did not mention was that is because the community
has made every effort to make it very difficult for them to get
access to it.
One of the three-letter agencies here in Washington, D.C.
does not have Internet access for each analyst. That to me is a
mind-blowing concept that we do not have that. Likewise, we do
not even put unclassified data up on the classified networks in
many cases because we are told, ``Well, the classified networks
are for classified information.'' Yet, that is the analysts'
operating environment.
But I think there are constraints in place. I am not
extremely familiar with the Department of Homeland Security's
intelligence infrastructure, but they exist, and if those need
to be looked at more carefully, I am certainly open to that.
Mr. Etheridge. But then how do we get the open source
available for use then?
Mr. Jardines. In part, I think, as Dr. Gannon mentioned,
making open-source resources available to the analysts.
Where I would disagree with Dr. Gannon is in that I think
we need an organization to provide that open-source information
to the analyst. Sure, analysts can go out and do their own, but
to say we do not need an organization to provide some level of
vetted, analyzed open-source information is like saying all
analysts should collect their own SIGINT or their own imagery
intelligence. No one would recommend that because all-source
analysts do not know how to do SIGINT, and they do not know how
to do IMINT.
The reality is if all-source analysts have the time and the
expertise to do effective open-source exploitation, I would be
standing in the unemployment line right now.
Dr. Gannon. Mr. Jardines is right that I have been using
open source more generically to really mean any information
that is not classified, not simply information that you can get
from the Internet. So, clearly, I am including in it
information that through whatever means the government can get
it, whether it is a subpoena or whatever, is non-classified
information.
So, for example, the records of my credit card purchases
and so on and so forth. So I obviously have been talking here
in a somewhat broader context, and I agree that there are
certainly constraints on it. I think Congress is wrestling with
it. It is wrestling, as Mr. Lungren pointed out, with the 215
issue. I think there has been oversight, and really all I was
trying to do is raise some issues that I think have not yet
been looked at and to say that we are going to have to keep
doing it.
In a way, and I will stop in a second, my testimony
presupposes the success of this committee and the government in
assuring effective use of open source. I am sort of at the next
stage. I am assuming you have succeeded, as I hope you will,
and you have government officials who do have the ability to
get their hands on this information, and I am saying, ``Okay,
what protections do we need,'' because after all we all want
them to be successful. Then when they are successful, what
problems does it raise.
Mr. Etheridge. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time has
expired. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. Thank you.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Dent.
Mr. Dent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My question to Dr. Gannon, how much danger is there that
having the government communicate information uses open sources
that it could reveal or perhaps or confirm the existence of
classified information? Would the government be seen as
confirming that classified information?
Dr. Gannon. I think this has been an occupational hazard
and timely memorial on the intelligence business, but it is an
eminently manageable problem. I think we, for example--I recall
the Congress told us that we needed to produce a declassified
version of the ballistic missile report, and I would say 80
percent of that was produced from clandestine sources. The
community protested that it could not do it, Congress said,
``You will do it.'' We did it, and I would say probably 80
percent of the analysis was actually derived from clandestine
sources could be declassified.
My point to you is, I do not think this is as big a problem
as you suggest. I think in dealing with the kind of hardship
everybody was talking about, there is a benefit on both sides,
that people who come from the outside who work with the
intelligence community will assume that as we work a problem
together, if there is classified information that would totally
contradict a trend or a path that is your taking, the
intelligence analyst would stop it.
On the other hand, the intelligence analysts are benefiting
tremendously from that outside infusion of expertise.
But I think this is a manageable problem, and I think
leadership within the intelligence and the policy community at
times have been particularly sensitive about particular issues,
and they have halted communication. But for the most part, I do
not see this as a problem that is particularly worrisome.
Mr. Dent. Thank you.
Mr. Jardines, a few moments ago that you mentioned that you
were frightened about some of the information you see in open
sources. Specifically, what type of open source information
frightens you the most and why?
Mr. Jardines. There are a number of things that one would
consider generally innocuous. For example, the newspaper, when
you buy a house, publishes the fact of who bought the house and
where it is located and how much it costs. I can take that
information and then pull up additional information regarding
tax assessment. I can get a sense of how big the house is. Once
I have the lot number, I can go down to town hall and get the
building permits, I can get copies of closing documents, which
in many cases contain information about mortgages and what not,
and we begin to put together information that someone who
really wanted to spend the time and energy to figure that out
or may want to do harm to you would have a fair amount of
information available.
Unfortunately, it is already out there. I cannot make the
newspaper pull it back, but that is the world we live in. I do
not like it, but there is going to be this level and much more
coming, and I do not see that that is going to change. We have
instance access to information and the ability to aggregate it.
Mr. Dent. Are you or any of the panelists suggesting that
there are any special privacy issues with the government
distributing open-source information then? If that frightens
you, should the government be judicious in how we disseminate
that type of open-source information?
Mr. Jardines. I think the fact that you are disseminating
it, in my hope, we would be disseminating it down to a very
diffuse level, down to local police departments. I do not see
that that is going to be an issue, because someone would think,
``Gee, if I am going to release this publicly, perhaps I should
think about does this betray sources and methods, are we
establishing a pattern here that talks about what we may be
interested in?'' And, obviously, if there is some libelous
information and what not, it is subject to public scrutiny.
That is the thing about open source is we cannot hide it, it is
unclassified.
Mr. Dent. I see my time has expired. I was going to ask you
to talk about the accuracy of this open-source information, but
I guess I will have to leave that to one of the other
questioners.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Rhode Island,
Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony and for being here
today.
I guess I have a couple of questions. First, I would start
out with I am a big believer that we need to use open-source
intelligence more aggressively than what we have been on a very
broad scale. And I am cognizant about, especially I am reading
a book right now by our colleague, Mr. Weldon, who is very
critical of our intelligence community and its failure to use
open-source intelligence more aggressively.
But I am also a believer that we should not be duplicating
efforts. I think in government all too often we pass measures
that are duplicative and not necessarily coordinating in
nature. We do that as a feel-good measure and think we have
fixed the problem and we have not necessarily done that.
So my question is with respect to creating a new open-
source intelligence directorate, how would that be different
from the work done by, for example, the National Intelligence
Council? You can help educate me and the committee with how
that would be complementary or duplicative if we were to do
that.
The other question that I have is, what role, if any,
should the DNI play in coordinating the collection, analysis,
production, dissemination of open-source intelligence? And what
steps we should be taking in general to get the intelligence
officers and analysts to use open-source intelligence resources
more aggressively than they have in the past?
If you could take those, I would be interested in hearing
your response.
Dr. Gannon. Well, I will start and you can help me by
repeating your first question. I think the DNI has a critical
role to play here. I think the DNI has--and I think we ought to
give him the time. I think to interpret so many of the
recommendations that have been made so that he can make the
best judgments about how to proceed within the community.
With regard to open-source information, I think he will
have a deputy for open-source information, and it will be his
responsibility to deal with dissemination issues and also deal
with some of the privacy issues that have been expressed here.
Because I think the issue on open source is not that we want to
in any way impede the dissemination of open-source information.
We want to certainly manage the way that it is used in the
production of intelligence products, the way it is interpreted
and particularly if it deals with U.S. citizens.
I think there can be policies in place that will instruct
analysts and hold them accountable for the way they use open-
source information. But I think the basic goal that I think
John Negroponte will adopt is to encourage much more actively
the use of open-source information to both put the systems in
place, technology, the policies in place that will encourage
that and then to hold his leaders accountable.
And I think the test John Negroponte would want to apply
with regard to any product that is produced in the intelligence
community is not whether it may be right or wrong but did it
avail itself of the best information available from all sources
before we presented this intelligence to the President or his
national security team?
Mr. Langevin. If you do not have a separate open-source
intelligence directorate somewhere, whether it is within DHS or
under the DNI, how do you, in a sense, compare or test that
collection or that analysis of data?
Dr. Gannon. Well, I think there is a management structure
dealing with the analysts in every one of the agencies of the
intelligence community. I think they can be held accountable
for the proper use and training in open-source areas. I think
the risk of having an open-source directorate is that there is
the impression that we have now centralized this priority or
this function within a directorate where it really does need to
be distributed and imposed as a responsibility through the
analytic community.
And I think there is a manager in the community now that it
is recognized that we are not where we need to be on open
source, and some of those managers, by the way, are dealing
with problems with security and other sort of institutional
resistance that is not just the analyst, it is embedding of
these programs and sensitive collection-dominated
organizations. So there is no analytic community that is
organized apart from the collections community.
So I think, again, on any intelligence product, again, I
would not ask the question, is it right or is it wrong or 6
months later I would not ask, was it right or wrong, I would
ask, did it use the best information available from all
sources, including open source? And that is an easy test
because you could find the information that might have been
better with regard to any particular issue.
Mr. Langevin. Any members of the panel want to comment on
that? And also getting to the question of how would the work of
an open-source intelligence directorate be different from the
work of, for example, the National Intelligence Council?
Dr. Gannon. I think they are completely different
functions, actually. The National Intelligence Council is a
group of a dozen or so senior experts where it focuses first on
expertise. A design goes back Director Colby back in 1973 when
he established the System of National Intelligence Officers.
What he wanted is prominent experts that could speak to him
about issues that should matter for U.S. national security and
then for him to the intelligence community so that they could
drive the analytic priorities and the estimate of work that
they did.
I do think the open-source directorate is about being at
the kind of leading edge of the technologies and methodologies
for the use of open source and imparting that to the analytic
community. It is not there to do substantive products. It is
more with a resource and a technical know-how kind of
organization.
Mr. Simmons. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon.
Mr. Weldon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, a very important hearing.
And thank each of you for testifying.
I want to walk my colleagues through a case study that I
think is very appropriate for this hearing, and I want to take
my colleagues back to 1999. I was then Chairman of the Defense
Research Subcommittee. We were standing up information
dominance centers for each of the services, and the information
dominant center of the Army, called the LIWA, the Land
Information Warfare Assessment Center, was headquartered at
Fort Belvoir. They were also linked with SOCOM down in Florida,
which was doing amazing work and using the same model that the
Army was using. They were bringing together disparate systems
of classified data, including open-source data, which the CIA
was not using at that time, to understand emerging
transnational threats.
John Hamre was the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and I asked
him to go down and look at this capability because I was
increasing the funding for it and he did, and he said, ``You
are right, Congressman.''
We put together a brief, a nine-page briefing, which I
would like to enter into the record.
Mr. Simmons. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Weldon. This brief in 1999 called for the creation of a
national operations and analysis hub, the policymakers tool for
acting against emerging transnational threats and dangers to
U.S. national security. And the concept was to bring together
33 classified systems managed by 15 agencies, including open-
source data to do massive data mining and using tools like
Starlight and Spires and other cutting-edge software
technologies to be able to give us the kind of information to
understand emerging threats.
John Hamre said, ``I agree with you, Congressman, and I
will pay the bill. The Defense Department will foot the bill
for this, and I do not care where the administration wants to
put it, at the White House, the NSC, wherever, but you have got
to convince the FBI and the CIA because they have a large part
of this data.''
So at John Hamre's suggestion, on November 4 of 1999,
almost 2 years before 9/11, we had a meeting with the Deputy
Directors of all 3 agencies. I went over the brief, and the CIA
said, ``Well, Congressman, that is great, but we do not need
that capability. We are doing something called CI-21, and we
feel we have enough capability and we do not need that extra
capability that you are talking about.
Well, at the time, the Army and SOCOM, passed by General
Shelton and General Schoomaker, who was Commander of SOCOM,
were doing a classified program called, ``Able Danger,'' which
has not yet been discussed in the open, and I do not know why
the 9/11 Commission did not go into it, because Able Danger was
focused on al-Qa'ida. Able Danger was a classified project of
SOCOM and our Army looking at the cells of al-Qa'ida worldwide
so that we would have actionable information to take out those
cells.
What I did not realize was that they had actually produced
a chart until 2 weeks after 9/11.
Now, Mike, unfold the chart.
This chart was taken by me in a smaller form to Steve
Hadley 2 weeks after 9/11. Now, it is difficult for my
colleagues to see even though I have had it blown up.
Hold it up, Mike.
This chart identifies the major al-Qa'ida cells, and if you
look to the chart in the center to the left, there is the
picture of Mohammad Atta. What the military did in 1999 and
2000 through the use of open-source data, and this is not
classified what I am showing you, they identified the Mohammad
Atta cell in New York and identified two of the other three
terrorists.
What I have since learned, and I have two--Mr. Chairman, if
we want to do a classified hearing on this, I have two military
personnel who will come in and testify who were involved with
this. But SOCOM made a recommendation to bring the FBI in and
take out the Mohammad Atta cell. And the lawyers, I guess
within SOCOM or within DOD, said, ``You cannot touch Mohammad
Atta, because he is here on a green card, as are the other two
suspected terrorists. And they were also concerned about the
fallout from WACO.
So now we have obtained through an open-source capability
that the CIA did not want to pursue, ``We do not need that.''
When I took this chart to Steve Hadley and opened it up in the
White House he said to me, ``Congressman, where did you get
this chart from?'' I said I got it from the military, special
forces command of that Army.
This is what I have been telling you we need to fuse
together our classified systems. And Steve Hadley, the Deputy
to the National Security Advisor, said, ``I have got to show
this to the man.'' I said, ``The man?'' He said, ``The
President of the United States.'' I said, ``You mean you do not
have this kind of capability?'' He said, ``Absolutely not,
Congressman.''
So he took the chart and he gave it to the President of the
United States.
In 2003, George Bush announced the TTIC, the Terrorism
Threat Integration Center. The TTIC is identical to what we
proposed in 1999 but the CIA told us, ``Trust us. We know
better. We know how to do this kind of capability. We know how
to do this emerging threat.'' They did not produce that chart.
It was done by military capabilities to the Army's Information
Dominant Center and through special forces command, tasked by
General Shelton and General Schoomaker.
Now, to add further insult to injury, bring out the next
chart. This is the capability that is now available but I have
been told it is not capable of being produced through the NCTC,
the National Counterterrorism Center.
This is al-Qa'ida today worldwide. Every one of those
little dots is a person or a cell, and every one of them are
identified. This is a worldwide global depiction of where al-
Qa'ida is today, the key cells that are threatening us, their
linkages to other nations, their linkages to terrorist attacks.
This information is all obtained through open-source
information. I have been told by the military liaison to the
NCTC that the NCTC could not produce this today.
Mr. Chairman, this is something that this subcommittee has
to pursue is I have been told that at the NCTC we have three
separate distinct entities and the stovepipes are still there.
For the life of me I cannot understand why there is resistance
among the people who are paid to do our intelligence to fuse
together information to give us a better understanding of
emerging threats. This comprehensive capability is now being
pursued by naval intelligence under a new task force that I
hope will be picked up by John Negroponte who I gave a brief to
2 weeks ago.
Open-source intelligence has been extremely valuable and
can be extremely valuable. I am not convinced yet that we are
there.
Mr. Simmons. I thank the gentleman for his statement. I
would request by unanimous consent that both charts be entered
into the record of this hearing, and I would be happy to
consult with the ranking members or members to have a follow-on
discussion in closed session of this issue.
Do any of the members wish to respond or shall we go to the
last member, the distinguished gentlelady from California, Ms.
Harman?
I apologize. Ms. Sanchez?
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Simmons. I did not see you around the corner there.
Ms. Sanchez. I know. These chairs get lower every week. I
do not know why. Someone is playing a game on us or something.
I actually have some questions. The first one will be to
our former majority head staff to the committee, and, John, I
just want you to know that at least I miss you. You have had a
chance now to be on that side, you have had a chance to be on
the inside during a very formative time here in particular with
respect to this committee, and there have been a lot of things
that we have done since 9/11 with respect to intelligence or
just trying to get our arms around this whole issue of
intelligence, including what we did making the directorate have
some responsibility for open-source information.
With what you know--I am sort of trying to pick your
brain--with what you know, because when I look at what we
thought we were doing after 9/11 with respect to homeland
security, one, get intelligence, not making new intelligence
but getting intelligence that exists and sort of coordinate it
in a real-time fashion so we could thwart a terrorist action;
the second thing, of course, trying to figure out how we put
limited resources to fortifying those things which are
important to our critical infrastructure; and, third, how do we
respond if in fact an attack comes through?
I want to get back to the first one, this whole issue of
intelligence. I guess I would ask you, what do you think is the
Department of Homeland Security's real niche in trying to
figure out this whole issue of intelligence, given that now we
have the intelligence czar position, et cetera. What do you
think we should be looking at when we oversee the Department's
look at intelligence?
Dr. Gannon. First of all, I would say that from my
perspective, having been on the Hill and the White House and
the intelligence community, I think a lot of the actions taken
after 9/11 were reactive kind of actions to improve our
capability to stop a terrorist attack. And I think if you look
at what we did on the foreign side by going after the
terrorists where they were and what we tried to do
domestically, we certainly did I think do a lot of damage to
terrorist infrastructures abroad. We did certainly raise the
costs of doing business for terrorists with what we did
domestically. And we have not had a terrorist attack. So I
think we can perhaps take some comfort in that.
But I also think that both with regard to the Department of
Homeland Security or the homeland security issue at large and
intelligence, I think in either case we really developed a
strategy, a kind of focused and resource-responsible strategy
that will sort of protect us long into the future.
And I think now with the appointment of John Negroponte and
with Mike Chertoff in the Department, I think there is a real
opportunity now to stand back and say, ``Look at all the things
we have done. A lot of them did not turn out the way we thought
we would.''
I think within the intelligence I think we have had--I
think our intention was to strengthen analytic capability, but
in some cases I think we have stretched analytic resources to a
point where I think we should take account of that fact. I
think we have tried to streamline and to integrate
accountability when in fact we have in many ways divided it.
And I think as I have moved around the intelligence community,
we have perhaps created so many new analytic units, that we are
doing a lot more production than we are analysis. But I think
that is all correctable.
But I do think we should be now looking at, you said, a
baselining of what we have done thus far and working together
to translate this into strategy. And I would also emphasize
from my experience I think it is critically important for the
intelligence community of the executive branch and the Congress
really to work together so that we are sort of working the same
agenda, because there are all sorts of things that we can say
are wrong.
The question is, how do we want to measure success for John
Negroponte over the next year or two? I think that really does
depend on having a consensus on what are the priorities of
things for us to do.
And, really, the priorities are not about massive new
structures and costly new programs, it is about fixing human
intelligence, which has been a problem we have known for some
time. That means getting the resources into the field and into
strategic kinds of planning of human programs. Rebuilding the
analytic capability, again, is something that does not depend
on structure, it depends on putting resources there.
So there are a number of issues that--there are really
probably four or five issues that I would want--community
training is another one. I think this has been an issue for
some time where we can clearly do integrated training that
would be to the benefit of the intelligence community.
So I would like us to give John Negroponte the time and
really work with him and show confidence in him and Mike Hayden
and their teams so that we can sort of admit that we have not
done everything right in recent years. We do want to get it in
a strategic direction, but there really cannot be a strategy
that will succeed unless it has the support of the White House,
the intelligence community leadership and the Congress.
So my answer to the Department of Homeland Security is I
continue to believe, as I have all along, that if you have a
Secretary of Homeland Security with the responsibilities that
this one has and has under the Homeland Security Act and I
suspect will continue to have for protecting America, first of
all, preventing terrorism against the homeland, for protecting
our critical infrastructure and for the quality of response
that we have to a terrorist attack, that requires significant
sustained intelligence support.
So he has got to have at the end of the day, however we
change the Homeland Security Act or however we narrow down or
focus in what has to be I think a real assessment of what roles
and responsibilities need to be across all these agencies, I
think you have got to have a strong intelligence capability for
this Secretary.
Ms. Sanchez. Thank you, Doctor. And I see my time is up.
I just want to say to Mr. Onek that I had a question about
some of your concerns, and I will submit them for the record,
because I am very interested in your ideas on the impact to the
Muslim community in particular.
Mr. Onek. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. The Chair thanks the gentlelady and now
recognizes the distinguished Ranking Member of the House
Intelligence Committee, Ms. Harman, from California.
Ms. Harman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say first
that I think you and the Ranking Member, Ms. Lofgren, bring
enormous experience and skill to this subcommittee's
activities. I am proud to serve on it.
And to our witnesses, whom I have known for many, many
years, you all, but especially Dr. Gannon and Mr. Onek, have
been there for the key fight, and you are resources that I hope
not just we but those who lead our intelligence community will
continue to call on. It is a pleasure to listen to you and to
learn from you.
Time is short, and I personally have to walk out of the
door in about 3 minutes, so I just want to make a couple of
observations. First, John Gannon just commented on the question
I would have asked, which is how to measure success. I think
that is a critical question. Joe Onek put a useful metric
before us which is to consider the front end, the back end and
then how to prevent misuse of the back end.
But I really think what we can contribute and what you can
contribute is a way to think about succeeding, not a way to
think about criticizing but a way to think about succeeding.
And I think it is frankly the question we also have to ask
about our venture in Iraq, but that is not the subject before
this committee. But if you have the answer to that, I would
welcome it.
So let me just comment that I hope as time proceeds we will
think about this. I hope as Secretary Chertoff releases his
review of the Department activities we will think about this. I
hope as Negroponte ramps up the activities of the DNI we will
think about this. Because the goal is not to rehearse old
fights and certainly the goal is not to point out where we come
up short, but the goal I think is to help good people in the
field who are doing their darndest to produce accurate,
actionable and timely intelligence get it right.
And public sources are a big part of this getting it right,
and we have ignored them at our peril, every one of you has
said that. How we do the mix, whether we separate out public
sources or integrate them in everybody's job, I kind of like
your concept, John, that a structural response to an
operational problem does not solve it, but, nonetheless,
getting it right is what we should be after, and getting it
right as we protect the privacy of Americans is what we should
be after.
So I apologize for not asking questions and running out the
door, but I, again, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Lofgren,
appreciate the fact that you have called this hearing and
appreciate the content of this hearing. Thank you.
Mr. Simmons. I thank you for your remarks and for bringing
your talent and expertise to these important subjects.
I do not believe that any members want to do a second round
and so I would be prepared to close, and I simply want to thank
our panelists for beginning this very important discussion on
open-source information and open-source intelligence.
I think this has been a tremendously educational 2 hours. I
believe that there is a great opportunity to follow up on this,
to bring in at some data, appropriate date, the Department of
Homeland Security to see where they are in this area and as
well to consider a closed session on the issues that Mr. Weldon
raised.
Again, if there are no additional comments from my
colleagues, I would like to thank the panelists for their
participation, and we stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
For the Record
Prepared Statement of the Honorable Sheila Jackson-Lee, a
Representative in Congress From the State of Texas
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, I thank you for holding today's
very important hearing on open-source information. I find it very
timely, especially after my experience with the Committee on the
Judiciary in analyzing ,the sections of the PATRIOT Act for
reauthorization. As we pass legislation that facilitates the
collection, storage, and use of intelligence information, it becomes
more important to monitor the government's adherence to the fundamental
Constitutional principles on which this nation was founded.
Of particular concern to me is Section 215 of those provisions.
Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act permits the government to scrutinize
peoples' reading habits through monitoring of public library and
bookstore records and requires bookstores and libraries to disclose, in
secrecy and under threat of criminal prosecution, personal records of
reading and web surfing habits. This harms freedom of thought, belief,
religion, expression, press, as well as privacy.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects Americans from
unreasonable searches and seizures. However, several provisions of the
Patriot Act authorize federal law enforcement to skirt the line of
reasonableness. For example, section 206 of the Patriot Act ``amends
FISA and eases restrictions involving domestic intelligence gathering
by allow[ing] a single wiretap to legally 'roam' from device to device,
to tap the person rather than the phone.''
Also, the Act allows federal law enforcement to delay notifying
subjects of sneak-and-peek searches, as long as notice is provided
within a ``reasonable'' time. A sneak-and-peek search is one in which a
law enforcement official searches the premises of a subject but delays
the notification required by the Fourth Amendment until a later time.
This type of delay is allowed when notification of the subject might
have an `` `adverse result.' ''The ``reasonable'' time may be extended
for" good cause.'' These expanded surveillance powers are especially
troubling because of their apparent contravention of the Fourth
Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
As the body charged with exercising oversight over the homeland
security-related aspects of intelligence-gathering, this hearing is of
extreme importance relative to setting the parameters of privacy
policies. One of my concerns relates to the proposed establishment of
the Homeland Security Operations Center Database (HSOCD) and possible
exemptions from the Privacy Act of 1974. I would hope that this
prospect is not slated to take effect absent a sufficient number of
hearings in committees of jurisdiction.
Mr. Chairman and Madame Ranking Member, again, I thank you for your
efforts..