After 9/11/01 the demand for and consumption of intelligence became a national priority. The National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan endorsed the concept of an intelligence system which would allow connectivity and sharing among local, state, tribal and federal authorities for the purpose of effectively protecting the homeland. This Plan also endorsed the need to have universal adoption of and adherence to certain proven rules for the collection, maintenance, dissemination and purging of intelligence information. The rules endorsed, the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit Criminal Intelligence File Guidelines and Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Part 23, have long been in use in local and state jurisdictions.



One of the many advantages of these two sets of rules is that they have been tested and have proven to strike an appropriate balance between the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the legitimate concerns of the civil liberties community. When properly followed they avoid situations in which there are revelations of unnecessarily broad invasions of citizens' privacy without a legitimate law enforcement purpose or the creation of intelligence files without existence of a criminal predicate.