LAW
ENFORCEMENT ONLINE
Information Sharing, Web Style
09/06/05
After
the first London bombing in July, we notified more
than 5,000 law enforcement professionals nationwide
about the attacks in 32 seconds.
How?
Through Law Enforcement Online, or LEO, a
secure computer network that gives law enforcement
officers around the country access to sensitive
but unclassified information, intelligence reports,
and alerts crafted by our agents and analysts--the
kind of information our partners need quickly, but
shouldn't be available to the public.
LEO
started ten summers ago as a small dial-up service
with just 20 members. Now, it has more than 46,000
members nationwide and a host of features and capabilities
offered through the Internet.
"One
of our agents said it best: LEO is the 'the law
enforcement, criminal justice, and public safety
information highway of the 21st century,'"
said Special Agent Kenneth Cassine, LEO Unit Chief
and program manager within our Criminal
Justice Information Services Division.
How
else has LEO evolved? Shortly before 9/11/01,
we made LEO a Virtual Private Network that operates
securely over the Internet and enables features
too cumbersome for the dial-up service. We now offer
the Virtual Command Center (VCC)--an information
sharing and crisis management tool. The VCC allows
the law enforcement community to use LEO at local
and remote sites as an electronic command center
to submit and view information and intelligence.
For
example, law enforcement personnel working a recent
Academy Awards ceremony observed several unauthorized
people in a restricted area carrying balloons. The
incident was reported to the VCC and immediately
posted. An officer working the event saw the notice.
He knew from previous experience that the individuals
were probably anarchists who intended to throw balloons
filled with paint and other liquids and shared that
information through the VCC. The officer's action
helped ensure that the group was detained without
incident.
What
else does LEO offer? Here's a rundown: