DSBlog

Comments (0)

Shortly before 11:00 PM on Sunday May 1, President Obama informed the nation in a televised address that special-operations forces had killed Osama bin Laden earlier that day. Exactly four days later, the Associated Press broke the news that local officials had been briefed on a threat to the U.S. rail system, gleaned from analyzing data captured at bin Laden’s secret hideaway in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

AP said the information gathered also “indicated a desire to hit the U.S. with large-scale attacks in major cities and on key dates such as anniversaries and holidays,” a hallmark of previous bin Laden-directed attacks. While we lament what appears to be a leak of sensitive information, we are amazed at the spectacular performance of the intelligence and security communities, especially when compared to where they were when the 9/11 attacks occurred.

This time, nearly 10 years later, information was collected in a covert operation, exploited by intelligence agencies, shared with DHS and then shared with fusion centers and law enforcement.  And this all happened in a matter of days, standing in stark contrast to the systemic dysfunction – stove-piped organizations, lack of info-sharing and even lack of understanding as to whom to share with – so depressingly documented in the 9/11 Commission report. An excellent write-up of the intel aspects of the raid can be found in this recent InformationWeek piece.

As regular DSBlog readers will know from our not-infrequent posts on the subject, the country still has a long way to go to achieve acceptable levels of information sharing. We have also questioned the reasoning behind the overall levels and proportional distribution of security funding to various agencies and programs, and this certainly includes the way funds are allocated for transportation security (click on the expandable map at right to view recent threats to the rail system). In fact The Wall Street Journal noted just yesterday, that “for every $50 the Transportation Security Administration spends on aviation security, the agency budgets $1 to protect surface transportation,” which includes buses as well as passenger and freight rail systems.

But credit where credit is due: in the decade since September 11, 2001, we have made clear and remarkable progress.

(Map graphic courtesy of the Heritage Foundation via The Wall Street Journal)

––––––––––––––––

Digital Sandbox is the leader in public safety risk management, providing analytic tools and information products to government agencies and large enterprises, for optimizing risk-based strategic, policy, and budgetary decisions.