Critical Releases in Homeland Security: January 16, 2008

"Crime data collected through the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are used by Congress to inform policy decisions and allocate federal criminal justice funding to states. As such, it is important to understand how each program collects and reports crime data, and the limitations associated with the data. This report reviews the history of the UCR, the NIBRS, and the NCVS; the methods each program uses to collect crime data; and the limitations of the data collected by each program. The report then compares the similarities and differences of UCR and NCVS data. It concludes by reviewing issues related to the NIBRS and the NCVS. The UCR represents the first effort to create a national, standardized measure of the incidence of crime. It was conceived as a way to measure the effectiveness of local law enforcement and to provide law enforcement with data that could be used to help fight crime. UCR data are now used extensively by researchers, government officials, and the media for research, policy, and planning purposes. The UCR also provides some of the most commonly cited crime statistics in the United States. The UCR reports offense and arrest data for 8 different Part I offenses and arrest data for 21 different Part II offenses. The NIBRS was developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to respond to the law enforcement community's belief that the UCR needed to be updated to provide more in-depth data to meet the needs of law enforcement into the 21st century."

"In October 2006, the Transportation Security Administration launched a website to help travelers whose names were erroneously listed on airline watch lists. This redress website had multiple security vulnerabilities: it was not hosted on a government domain; its homepage was not encrypted; one of its data submission pages was not encrypted; and its encrypted pages were not properly certified. These deficiencies exposed thousands of American travelers to potential identity theft. After an internet blogger identified these security vulnerabilities in February 2007, the website was taken offline and replaced by a website hosted on a Department of Homeland Security domain. At the request of Chairman Henry Waxman, Committee staff have been investigating how TSA could have launched a website that violated basic operating standards of web security and failed to protect travelers' sensitive personal information. As this report describes, these security breaches can be traced to TSA's poor acquisition practices, conflicts of interest, and inadequate oversight." The report finds the following: 1. TSA awarded the website contract without competition. 2. The TSA official in charge of the project was a former employee of the contractor. 3. TSA did not detect the website's security weaknesses for months. 4. TSA did not provide sufficient oversight of the website and the contractor.

"The spread of a new, deadly strain of avian influenza has raised fears of a potential human pandemic. While the virus is not easily transmissible to humans, were it to mutate to be more highly contagious to or between humans-a possibility whose probability is unknown-an influenza pandemic could occur. Government agencies have an essential role to play in helping to prevent and mitigate epidemics. Unfortunately, in recent years, our government's approach to preparing the nation for a possible influenza pandemic has been highly misguided. Too often, policymakers are resorting to law enforcement and national security-oriented measures that not only suppress individual rights unnecessarily, but have proven to be ineffective in stopping the spread of disease and saving lives. The following report examines the relationship between civil liberties and public health in contemporary U.S. pandemic planning and makes a series of recommendations for developing a more effective, civil liberties-friendly approach. Rather than focusing on well-established measures for protecting the lives and health of Americans, policymakers have recently embraced an approach that views public health policy through the prism of national security and law enforcement. This model assumes that we must 'trade liberty for security.' As a result, instead of helping individuals and communities through education and provision of health care, today's pandemic prevention focuses on taking aggressive, coercive actions against those who are sick. People, rather than the disease, become the enemy."