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DHS Mapping Tool Boosts Situational Awareness |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Thursday, 01 April 2010 |
iCAV does not pose any special risk to privacy, report says
A mapping tool used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to visualize US critical infrastructure relies upon commercially available geospatial data and does not present any special privacy risk, according to a review released Wednesday by the DHS chief privacy officer.
The DHS National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) has implemented the Integrated Common Analytical Viewer (iCAV), a sensitive but unclassified program, to provide situational awareness to local, state and federal agencies regarding threats to sites classified by the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP), noted Chief Privacy Officer Mary Ellen Callahan in Privacy Impact Assessment for the Integrated Common Analytical Viewer.
NPPD developed the software in response to Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, issued in 2003, which required DHS to map and analyze US critical infrastructure and key resources to visualize the risks to those assets. The NPPD Office of Infrastructure Protection uses this information to identify and prioritize the risks of a terrorist attack.
Homeland security officials at the local, state, and federal levels of government can access iCAV through the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN). Authorized users can use publicly available datasets to create layers of information on sites of specific interest to them.
HSIP sites include various resources across emergency services, public utilities, telecommunications systems, transportation systems, energy facilities, and industrial sites. In its early days, critics ridiculed the HSIP program for including mundane sites like amusement parks.
"Incorporating iCAV with HSIP creates an improved geospatial context for situational and strategic awareness across the nation and US territories and holdings around the globe that allows better preparation for, prevention of, and response to natural and man-made disasters," the privacy report stated.
Licensing restrictions have prompted DHS to set up two HSIP datasets within iCAV--HSIP Gold for federal agencies and HSIP Freedom for state and local agencies. The HSIP datasets include a geospatial data inventory provided by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency along with DHS, Department of Defense, and US Geological Survey.
Using a data feed service called DHS Earth, iCAV users can view geospatial data through specific lenses. For example, users can overlay data from the National Weather Service, hurricane warnings, wildfire zones, flood areas, population density data, and other information to enhance situational awareness.
iCAV alone does not contain personally identifiable information on individuals in or related to HSIP sites, but users could overlay data from external feeds that could include such information, the report cautioned.
As such, the program is a privacy sensitive system but alone does not present any special privacy risks, the report concluded. A warning in the system advises against the use of personally identifiable information within the program.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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