Social Media and Border Security

Over the past few weeks I've had a chance to dig into many issues associated with protecting the Southern border between Texas and Mexico.   There are many problems that need to be addressed to effectively conduct the LE mission in this area.  There are several types of problems that need to be addressed, the easiest ones deal with technology.  The more difficult problems deal with policy at the government/agency level, and more interpersonal communications issues such as building trust with ones peers in other agencies as well as other countries.

Social media technologies may be used to solve many of these problems including interpersonal communication.  As people build relationships with their peers the level of trust increases naturally.  As cross-agency collaboration is used more, the collective intelligence of the entire group is brought to bear on the actual problem of security along the border rather than wasting resources solving less important problems.  By changing policies where appropriate and using social media technology and media convergence the LE community can realize great successes in their day-to-day operations.

E-Government Technology and Law Enforcement: COPLINK

The LE community is beginning to take advantage of technology to reap the benefits of information sharing and collective intelligence.  The COPLINK application is an integrated information system that aims to facilitate timely data access and improved inter/intra-agency collaboration/information sharing.  Hu et. al provide a research model dealing with Officer acceptance of the 2009 release of COPLINK Mobile, an application for handheld devices and tablets to provide easy access to COPLINK functionality.  Their theoretical model regarding officer acceptance of new technology is directly relevent to my research dealing with LE Fusion and use of social media technology along the Southern Border.  Their article hypothesizes that: efficiency gain, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, facilitating conditions, timely assistance, social influence and behavioral intention are all contributing factors associated with LE Officer Mobile Link acceptance.  One area their model can be improved to to add some items that influence perception of efficiency gain.  Hu et. al define what they believe efficiency gain entails.  What I need to show is how technology affects this major contributor to acceptance.  There are human factors pieces such as their ease of use, but I believe connectivity of data, the ability to search dispartate sources of data with one query, and the speed/performance of the system also have a large influence on use of the application.


Hu, P. J. H., Chen, H., Hu, H., Larson, C., & Butierez, C. (2010). Law enforcement officers' acceptance of advanced e-government technology: A survey study of COPLINK mobile. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

6 Ways LE uses Social Media

Found an interesting web post on mashable.com:  http://mashable.com/2010/03/17/law-enforcement-social-media/

Looks like there is a conference that took place in DC dealing with LE use of social media.  Many of the uses called out are ones that I have mentioned previously.  Nice to see some police forces are starting to take this seriously.  Looks like this is aligned at the local LE level.

Open Government Directive

The Obama administration has created the Open Government Initiative in an effort to make the Federal Government more transparent and responsive to the every day person.  They base their efforts on three principles: transparency, participation, and collaboration.

• Transparency in government is meant to promote accountability within the government, agencies post what they are doing and what their plans entail.  Then the public can comment on the plans and execution.
• Participation allows citizens to provide input to the government, brainstorm ideas and solutions.  It enables citizens to take an active role in developing government programs and policies.
• Collaboration encourages partnership between agencies to take advantage of each others strengths and build upon each other's successes.

The problems along the Southern border fall directly within the participation and collaboration areas.  The use of social media technology encourages participation and takes advantage of people's innate desire to make a difference.

Collaboration enables peer development and shortens time to reality for ideas by taking advantage of our nation's collective intelligence.

References:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/documents/open-government-directive

Use of Social Media for Border Security

There are many problems associated with defending our Southern Border, some technological, some political, and some that just deal with social behavior of the workers.

Policy
One of the largest problems facing government organizations is aging policies.  There are many policies in place that prevent interaction among government agencies, one of them deals with the "need to know".  There are a few factors that affect a person's access to sensitive data to of which are the individual's security clearance (the level of trust placed in the person by the government) and their "need to know".  Just because an individual has the proper clearance doesn't mean they have the "need to know" the information.  This policy is starting to change, beginning with the National Director of Intelligence creating the A-Space program for intelligence analysts to share their thoughts and collaborate with peers across the many organizations that  make of the Intelligence Community.  This policy is very limiting with respect to social media utilization.

Politics
In some cases there is still an us vs. them mentality when it comes to government agencies.  Agencies don't want to share information because it may give a competitive advantage to a "competing" agency.

Another political obstacle along the border deals with political differences between countries.  To effectively combat the human and drug trafficking across our Southern border, we need to work with Mexican officials.  How do you effectively share information with a foreign government when you have difficulty sharing with other US Government agencies?

Social
Along the political lines, how do you know if you can trust other agency officials or counterparts from foreign countries such as Mexico if you don't have an interpersonal relationship built?

Technology
The technology problems associated with collaboration along the border are somewhat easier to address although still a challenge.  How do you secure the collaborative environment, keeping out the "bad guys" while allowing the "good guys" to effectively communicate and share ideas?

I'll begin to address some of these challenges over the next several weeks of class.

Murray's four characteristics of a computer

Encyclopedic: Computers are encyclopedic in that they allow us to access vast amounts of data almost instantly. Once we have access to the data we are able to transform the data into information that is useful for our purposes. What is also important is that computers allow us to access the data in many different formats. We are long past just thinking about data as text and numbers. We now have access to videos, online presentations, podcasts, etc. that enable us to get a better understanding of data from many different viewpoints.

Participatory: Computers allow us to collaborate with one another without being physically present. We can now gather the information noted above and get together to hypothesize about data and outcomes and create higher quality products as a result. The participatory nature allows us to take advantage of our collective intelligence. Computers are also participator in that we are able to directly interact with the machine and receive feedback through well-defined interfaces with set behavior.

Procedural: The procedural aspect of computers is what provides the behaviors associated with the interfaces. Programmers write procedures that enforce the rules of interaction with the computer.

Spatial: As computers become more powerful we are able to take advantage of their spatial nature. As Griz noted we are able to move up and down and interact with the computer spatially. What is becoming more evident is that the spatial nature is increasing and becoming more immersive. For example, the X Box now allows you to be the controller. It won't be long before we can interact with 3D computer interfaces just using our natural body motions.

Murray's four characteristics of a computer

Encyclopedic: Computers are encyclopedic in that they allow us to access vast amounts of data almost instantly. Once we have access to the data we are able to transform the data into information that is useful for our purposes. What is also important is that computers allow us to access the data in many different formats. We are long past just thinking about data as text and numbers. We now have access to videos, online presentations, podcasts, etc. that enable us to get a better understanding of data from many different viewpoints.

Participatory: Computers allow us to collaborate with one another without being physically present. We can now gather the information noted above and get together to hypothesize about data and outcomes and create higher quality products as a result. The participatory nature allows us to take advantage of our collective intelligence. Computers are also participator in that we are able to directly interact with the machine and receive feedback through well-defined interfaces with set behavior.

Procedural: The procedural aspect of computers is what provides the behaviors associated with the interfaces. Programmers write procedures that enforce the rules of interaction with the computer.

Spatial: As computers become more powerful we are able to take advantage of their spatial nature. As Griz noted we are able to move up and down and interact with the computer spatially. What is becoming more evident is that the spatial nature is increasing and becoming more immersive. For example, the X Box now allows you to be the controller. It won't be long before we can interact with 3D computer interfaces just using our natural body motions.