What Is Fusion Intelligence?

Fusion intelligence is a term used in the United States to describe the nexus between state and local law enforcement and national intelligence activities both in terms of process and outcome.

The idea behind fusion intelligence, essentially, is to enhance situational awareness so that officials at the local, state, and federal level can better understand and, hence respond, to threats in local communities that may affect national security.

Fusion intelligence, therefore, involves fusing or merging data from a variety of sources to produce a synergy of effective and actionable intelligence products for consumers. Examples of information that may become part of an intelligence package may range from suspicious activity reports collected and compiled by police in a local community to human intelligence (HUMINT) collected from undercover Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents or Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) clandestine officers stationed abroad.

Some of the Challenges of Fusion Intelligence -

Because fusion intelligence, as defined here, involves coalescing information gathered from both law enforcement and traditional national intelligence collection agencies, there are a number of challenges to its successful implementation and use by decision makers.

One potential disconnect can be found, for example, in the disparate missions of the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Whereas the CIA is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, primarily through HUMINT sources, the LAPD is accountable for the safety of the people within its jurisdiction, which includes fighting crime. Each of these missions has different requirements for training, experience, skills, education, and expertise.

Fusion Intelligence Solutions -

Those charged with intelligence, protection, and counterterrorism analysis and collection in the homeland security domain must have a collective, over-arching vision and mission to overcome obstacles to collaboration and cooperation between different agencies and departments.

Building a paradigm of a “responsibility to share” information as opposed to a “need to know” mindset, which is outlined in the US Intelligence Community Information Sharing Strategy (February 2008), is one way that intelligence officials are working to foster a culture of partnering – in the interest of combating terrorism and homeland security – at the local, state, and federal level.

Fusion Centers -

The perceived need for intelligence collected from disaggregated sources, like criminal intelligence databases created by the law enforcement community and terrorist watch lists hosted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), led the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create Intelligence Fusion Centers. Fusion Centers act as conduits to share information and circumvent traditional “stovepipes” that exist – in varying levels and degrees – between not only national intelligence agencies, like the FBI and CIA, but also between municipal and state police departments.

In the end, fusion centers facilitate communication between intelligence analysts and law enforcement personnel, which enable and empower them – at least on paper – to provide local, state, and federal officials with timely and relevant information so that they can better understand and respond to threats across jurisdictions. Consequently, fusion intelligence requires knowledge of issues facing local communities from a law enforcement perspective in addition to knowledge of foreign terrorist threats to national security.