PanACEA

PanACEA

Intelligence experts agreed that one of the main reasons why September 11 occurred was because of the inability of America’s 14 major intelligence forces to communicate with each other quickly and easily, and the general levels of red tape produced by so many organizations. One of the solutions to this was the Pan-Agency Cooperative Expert system Application, nicknamed PanACEA.

Many of the US intelligence agencies have different jurisdictions and powers. For example, the FBI has access to local police information but the CIA does not, as they are prevented from investigating anything within the boundaries of the United States. The CIA has satellite photos of the whole world but only the BDS (Bureau of Diplomatic Security) or the ICE (Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can track the movement of people and items. The ICE lacks the authority to access any military information, unlike the DoD – but they need to get JAG (Judge Advocate General) clearance for warrants, unlike the NSA (National Security Agency) – but being a listening service, the NSA need special dispensation to access DOFA, the FBI’s fingerprint database.

Under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, such permissions or channels could be granted upstream by a protocol expert system or human agent, the data accessed and sorted at a central authority and then routed back to the querying agent. PanACEA does all that, and it works on the iPhone. Turnaround varies depending on the sensitivity of the information and the clearances needed, but is rarely more than 24 hours and often merely seconds.