LInX Brochure - Northrop Grumman Corporation

LInX
Law Enforcement Information
Exchange

T
he Law Enforcement
Information Exchange,
or LInX, is a regional
information sharing system
created, coordinated, and primarily
funded by the U.S. Naval Criminal
Investigative Service (NCIS). It
has begun to revolutionize law
enforcement in the 21st century.
In today’s digital environment,
information is more important
than ever for the patrol officers,
investigators, and crime analysts
supporting our communities.
LInX breaks down artificial
jurisdictional and technical
barriers between municipal,
county, state, and federal law
enforcement agencies. This
state-of-the-art collaborative
information sharing program
is currently operating in eleven
regional locations around the
U.S.: Washington/Oregon; Hawaii;
New Mexico; Gulf Coast, Texas;
Florida/Georgia; Hampton Roads
and Richmond, VA; Washington,
DC, region; Southern California;
North Carolina; Northeast; and a
Department of Defense (DoD) Data
Exchange for the DoD Criminal
Investigative Organizations.
According to NCIS statistics, over
800 law enforcement agencies are
using LInX in their daily routines,
and more than 38,000 law
enforcement professionals have
been trained in and are employing
LInX to achieve investigative and
operational successes. Hampton
Roads law enforcement agencies
alone query LInX more than
100,000 times each month.
There are many important factors
contributing to the success of
LInX. This is a federally funded
and regulated program, with
complete ownership by the
participating agencies. Ease of
access and retrieval of the data
makes this an officer-friendly
information tool. But the most
compelling outcome, and
success, is that bad guys
(and women) are identified and
ultimately go to jail more quickly
after a crime is reported.
Dozens of success stories are
posted every day across America.
Every street cop and investigator
knows that the faster a criminal
goes to jail, the fewer crimes will
be committed. With millions of
records now available across
jurisdictional lines at the fingertips
of patrol officers, investigators
and analysts, the identities,
relationships, and current and past
histories of the suspects are
now pulled together in a single
screen. Coupled with analytical
tools like free-text search and
link analysis, formerly unrelated
information from pocket trash to
task force operations is combined
in a usable and actionable format.

Having current information
available at the street level has
enhanced officer safety and
the ability to solve crime, fight
terrorism and protect strategic
assets. The ability to instantly
retrieve relevant data on people
with whom the officer is in
contact or is about to contact—
data contributed by other law
enforcement professionals who
have histories with the subject—
is making our law enforcement
environment safer each day.
Tactics and strategies can be
developed and approached from
a position of greatly improved
knowledge of the subjects, their
potential locations, associates,
vehicles and past habits.
Those with more than 30 years
of experience remember the
frustration in closing cases
committed by career criminals
who routinely crossed
jurisdictional lines. Their identities,
relationships, addresses and
accomplices were included in law
enforcement files and records
in neighboring agencies. But the
time and effort required to find
the information, if it indeed could
be retrieved, was challenging at
best, more often impossible.
Now that data from arrest and
incident records, investigations,
traffic reports, computer-aided
dispatch data, booking records,
warrants, field interviews, and
other key law enforcement data
sources is available automatically,
the probability of solving crimes
and incarcerating criminals has
improved dramatically.
Officer M.C. Burnham of the
Norfolk, VA, Police said, “LInX
has been a godsend for a patrol
officer like me. We have the
system running in our cars
and are able to look up police
involvements on anybody at a
moment’s notice. The open-ended
search has been very helpful
(in getting) me information on
individuals for minor crimes that
I handle as well as being able to
provide accurate data for reports
that go on to the detective unit.
LInX has also helped me with
officer safety; I can be clued into
any violent tendencies, crimes, or
weapons involvement the subject
may have.
Since the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, the intelligence
community has accelerated the
use of technology with great
success. The keys to success,
although technologically driven
in most formats, are the quality
and quantity of data and the
openness of sharing that data
with “communities of interest.”
That concept is at the core of
LInX.
Another critical success factor
of LInX is the executive-level
relationships and strategies
that have evolved. Police chiefs,
sheriffs, special agents-in-charge
and directors of law enforcement
agencies at all levels actively
participate in the strategic
decision making required to
implement this program across
jurisdictional boundaries. Solid
governance and collaboration
between law enforcement
executives have resulted in
trusted partnerships within the
regions and with their federal
law enforcement peers.
All legally sharable structured
and unstructured data—federal,
state, county and local—is included
in each system with a balance
between usability and security.
Because LInX is built upon a data
warehouse Web services model,
agency executives can feel
secure knowing that they control
all aspects of the data they
decide to share.
The LInX technology is platform
independent in that it incorporates
virtual “front porches” to which
the cooperating agencies can
publish and share the data they
choose. Each agency decides
which data it will share and can
choose among flexible options
for implementing a “front porch”
in concert with its current
network infrastructure.
The entire infrastructure is invisible
to users who query all available,
shared data with a standard
Web browser as if it were a single
system. In addition, for added
security and control of legacy
system workload management,
legacy systems can be
completely isolated from
the LInX system if desired.
LInX provides comprehensive,
proven and certified DoD-level
security capabilities and features
originally designed for sensitive
defense and intelligence agencies.
The users are categorizing LInX
as “mission critical,” and NCIS is

continually obtaining feedback
from its users in order to integrate
additional functionality. What
started seven years ago as a
“science project” partnership
between NCIS and Northrop
Grumman has emerged as a
state-of-the-art in law enforcement
data-sharing tool used across
the United States.
As success stories concerning the
use of this valuable informationsharing
tool continue to be
reported, new and emerging
organizational relationships have
been and are being formed to
fight crime and prevent terrorism.
For the past three years, LInX
Northwest (Washington/Oregon)
has successfully shared municipal,
county and state law enforcement
records with five key Department
of Justice investigative agencies
through the “One DOJ” informationsharing
program.
NCIS developed a secure Web
service interface between LInX
Northwest and One DOJ, permitting
local/county officers and
detectives to conduct queries of
law enforcement information from
the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Drug enforcement Administration,
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, Bureau of Prisons
and the U.S. Marshals. In return,
special agents and analysts from
each of these Justice Department
components can query records
from over 200 agencies between
Portland, OR, and Seattle and
Yakima, WA.
Law enforcement officers at all
levels are solving cases more
efficiently and more effectively
through LInX. In 2007, Immigration
and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
began sharing open and closed
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IS8141212ISD
investigative files with the LInX
Northwest and One DOJ programs.
ICE personnel were successful
in resolving a significant money
laundering investigation as a
result of this information
collaboration.
The days of “information is
power” or “my information, my
case” are behind us as a law
enforcement community. The
tragic events of 9/11 and
subsequent violent assaults in
our high schools and universities
across the nation prove more
than ever that we, as a law
enforcement community, are
inter-dependent. We must move
to a new paradigm, one that is
characterized by willingly and
necessarily sharing information,
cases and records with each
other. The criminals and terrorists
who attack the citizens who we
are sworn to protect, exploit
our jurisdictions and borders to
their advantage. It is time that we
take that advan-tage away from
them through prudent, secure
and responsible law enforcement
information sharing.
LInX is a proven operational
capability in those regions where
it has been deployed. LInX and
similar information-sharing
initiatives must be encouraged
by executive law enforcement
leadership, and institutionalized
in the same way that we have
become dependent upon
fingerprinting and DNA analysis.
Source: Law and Order, Volume
56, No. 7, July 2008 by Michael
Dorsey and Douglas Smith.
For more information,
please contact:
Northrop Grumman
Information Systems
LInX
Mark Harris
mark2.harris@ngc.com
571-235-9675