AEI: More federal funds for human intelligence efforts needed to thwart terrorists

More federal counterterrorism funding should be directed to local law enforcement agencies for human intelligence initiatives in urban areas where the risk of a terrorist attack is high, according to Matt Mayer, a homeland security expert at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), recently told Homeland Preparedness News.

The attacks in Orlando, Brussels, San Bernardino and Paris exposed gaps in national security efforts to detect and foil terrorist plots as attackers increasingly rely on encrypted technology.

“With the rise of encrypted technology and the increased sophistication that the terrorists and their sympathizers are using, we’re going to have to move into the human intelligence sphere in local law enforcement if we’re going to give ourselves a better chance of catching lone wolf or small cell operatives,” Mayer, a visiting fellow in homeland security studies at AEI, said in a recent interview.

While law enforcement agencies can collect metadata from mobile phones, including phone numbers and call length, much of the data is now encrypted. One way local law enforcement can overcome that obstacle is through traditional investigative work, similar to what has been used to infiltrate organized crime for decades, Mayer said.

Local law enforcement’s human intelligence capabilities should be expanded in the areas of short-term monitoring, continuous surveillance and undercover investigations in order to thwart potential terrorist activity, Mayer, a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), added.

Mayer wrote in a recent AEI report on expanding human intelligence that federal counterterrorism funding needs to focus on prevention as a result of diminished resources – DHS grant funding declined to $1.6 billion in 2016 from a high of $3.6 billion in 2005, the report said.

The DHS has identified 29 urban areas as high-risk jurisdictions for its Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) grant program, and Mayer said that a large amount of UASI grant funds should go toward the personnel costs related to human intelligence efforts.

“After 13-14 years of terrorism funds coming out of Washington, we should have acquired the technology and the equipment on the prevention and response side of the fence when it comes to local first responders,” Mayer said. “The best next dollar really should go to the personnel when it gets into the human intelligence factor.”

UASI grants should fund equipment, training and personnel costs, including overtime incurred when an investigation requires it, Mayer wrote in the report. DHS should commit to funding approved human intelligence programs for at least three years, to ensure continuity and personnel development, he added.

Other reforms are also needed to better manage U.S. national security.

Mayer said that the federal government should designate the FBI as the lead agency for state and local counterterrorism efforts.

“I firmly believe that we need to have local law enforcement and the feds bolted together and I think that can be best done through the (FBI’s) Joint Terrorism Task Force,” Mayer said.

In some ways, the rise of DHS-funded fusion centers has created the segmentation of information intelligence between different entities that may not always be operating together and sharing key pieces of information during an investigation, Mayer said. Those fusion centers gather and share threat-related information between federal, state, local and private sector entities.

“With federal terrorism funds, because they are finite, we need to make sure they are being used in the most effective and efficient way, and my belief is that is done through a JTTF entity rather than multiple entities spread across the cities or a state,” Mayer said.