Common Threat, Collective Response: Protecting Against Terrorist Attacks in a Networked World

Common Threat, Collective Response: Protecting Against Terrorist Attacks in a Networked World (speech transcript)

Speaker: Janet Napolitano, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Presider: Paul E. Steiger, Editor in Chief, ProPublica
July 29, 2009, New York
Council on Foreign Relations

Excerpt:

"We've now moved three dozen intelligence analysts out to the field. In other words, as we build the fusion centers, we need to move analytic capacity from the Beltway to the country. So let's -- how this is used. And I'll take it out of the terrorism context for just a moment. That if a law enforcement agency reports an increase in drug seizures of a particular type, that is a data point. That's a piece of intelligence. But a whole range of agencies working together in a particular fusion center can analyze that trend to understand what it means, how it will affect particular neighborhoods, and whether it foretells something even larger on the horizon."

(Hopefully, we are moving into the direction that this blog advocates.)

The website also has links to audio and video of the speech.