WRITTEN ON June 21st, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Problem: angry Saudis hijack planes and crash them into skyscrapers in US&A. Solution: er, data sharing? That seems to be history as related by Jonathan Faull, Director-General for Justice, Freedom and Security to the Lords select ctte on the EU. But he did seem a bit confused:

The change can be summed up as the introduction of what they call an “Information Sharing Environment” ISE. In America part of the Department of Homeland Security is called ISE, and I forget what that is.

Ms Verkleij: That is a special branch.

Mr Faull: Customs?

Ms Verkleij: No, it is a special security area.

Mr Faull: The Information Sharing Environment is ISE. What is ISE? ISE is, I think we can understand this, one of the principal lessons that the US authorities have learned from 9/11 and from the 9/11 Commission Report, which is that intelligence information should be shared between all the law enforcement agencies that are likely to find it useful. The criticism made of the situation which prevailed until 11 September 2001 was an excessive
compartmentalisation of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, an issue not unknown in some of our own countries, and no doubt lessons have been learned on this side of the Atlantic as well. They explained to us in Washington that the main lesson they learned was you must share information. If information enters the US system, the US Government, a US agency in one place, it has an obligation to make sure that all the other members of what is a rather large community and a rather large body of agencies at federal and state level in the United States should also know. I think that is a matter of fact. That law was enacted. The President gave the orders to the Executive Branch to follow this very carefully.

Oh but this is so confused. I thought the main lesson was not to depend on oil, not to prop up unjust regimes that allowed religious extremism to fester and to treat everyone but most especially those in the Middle East with respect in the hope that just settlement and peace would follow. The World Trade Centre attacks asked big questions about America’s approach to the rest of the world, and sharing more data about law-abiding European air travellers is a pretty unlikely candidate for the right answer.