Us Looks To Extend Intelligence At Sea, Borders

The U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., will start new projects to add biometric and intelligence gathering technologies to the Coast Guard and Navy.

The Northern Command is a domestic military command created in the wake of 9/11 that collaborates with the Department of Homeland Security. It serves to bolster military relations with civilian authorities on security issues.

At a meeting in October jointly sponsored by the Northern Command, NORAD, and the new Homeland Defense Foundation, leaders from the Pentagon discussed ways to use military technologies in conjunction with law enforcement, border officers, and the Coast Guard.

Brig. Gen. Jose Riojas, commander of the Joint Task Force North at Biggs Army Air Field in Texas, discussed expanding the use of aerial reconnaissance and ground surveillance radar to deter drug dealing and secure borders. Riojas said this would require intelligence to be disseminated to state and local forces and to Border Patrol agencies.

Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said the Pentagon must act as a “consumer” of domestic intelligence supplied by law enforcement networks or overseas sources, because the Pentagon is forbidden by law to collect domestic intelligence by itself.

Col. Punch Moulton of the Reserve Joint Task Force of the Northern Command noted that “local first responders don’t have the clearance to use classified Defense Department networks, but we need to work out ways to let local authorities use classified DOD resources.”
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the EE Times (10/25/04); Wirbel, Loring .