{
  "id": "R41848",
  "type": "CRS Report",
  "typeId": "REPORTS",
  "number": "R41848",
  "active": false,
  "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
  "versions": [
    {
      "source": "EveryCRSReport.com",
      "id": 408886,
      "date": "2011-06-06",
      "retrieved": "2016-04-07T00:48:00.309611",
      "title": "Intelligence Information: Need-to-Know vs. Need-to-Share",
      "summary": "Unauthorized disclosures of classified intelligence are seen as doing significant damage to U.S. security. This is the case whether information is disclosed to a foreign government or published on the Internet. On the other hand, if intelligence is not made available to government officials who need it to do their jobs, enormous expenditures on collection, analysis, and dissemination are wasted. These conflicting concerns require careful and difficult balancing. \nInvestigations of the 9/11 attacks concluded that both technical and policy barriers had limited sharing of information collected by different agencies that, if viewed together, could have provided useful insight into the unfolding plot. A consensus emerged that U.S. intelligence agencies should share information more widely in order that analysts could integrate clues acquired by different agencies in order to \u201cconnect the dots.\u201d \nMajor statutory and regulatory changes were made to facilitate information sharing among agencies. An Information Sharing Environment was created within the new Office of the Director of National Intelligence in order to establish policies, procedures, and technologies to link people, systems, and information from government agencies. In law and in Federal regulations a culture of sharing has been established in the Intelligence Community. \nAlthough government officials maintain that policies designed in recent years to increase sharing have helped prevent a number of serious terrorist attacks and contributed significantly to the May 2, 2011 operation against Osama bin Laden, the results have been uneven and, in some cases, unfortunate. Reviews of the Fort Hood shooting in 2009 and the attempted bombing of a commercial airliner the following Christmas revealed that serious obstacles to information sharing had not been completely overcome. At the same time, wide availability of State Department cables provided the opportunity for massive leaks of classified documents (including some intelligence materials) through the WikiLeaks website and cooperating media.\nDespite these developments, support for information sharing among intelligence agencies remains strong within both the executive branch and Congress. Intelligence Community representatives have recently described new technologies and procedures to enhance information security including capabilities to determine who has had access to particular reports. Members of Congress included legislative initiatives to accomplish similar goals in FY2011 intelligence authorization legislation (H.R. 754) that has passed both the House and Senate. The challenge remains, how to manage inherent risks to find the \u201csweet spot\u201d (the term used by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper) between information security and information sharing.\nThis report focuses on information acquired, analyzed, and disseminated by agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community, but these concerns also affect classified information outside the Intelligence Community. Efforts to encourage and regulate sharing between Federal agencies and state, local, and tribal agencies are also important and they are directly addressed in CRS Report R40901, Terrorism Information Sharing and the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Report Initiative: Background and Issues for Congress, by Mark A. Randol and CRS Report R40602, The Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Enterprise: Operational Overview and Oversight Challenges for Congress, by Mark A. Randol. Further background can be found in CRS Report RL34177, A Summary of Fusion Centers: Core Issues and Options for Congress, by Todd Masse and John Rollins.",
      "type": "CRS Report",
      "typeId": "REPORTS",
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      "topics": []
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  "topics": [
    "Intelligence and National Security"
  ]
}