ingful, form. Therefore the maximum number of recipients can access some
form of that information. If knowledge of further details becomes important,
any user can query further, with access granted or denied according to the rules
set for the network--and with queries leaving an audit trail in order to deter-
mine who accessed the information. But the questions may not come at all
unless experts at the "edge" of the network can readily discover the clues that
prompt to them.
base. Agency users send information to the database and then can
retrieve it from the database.
still have their own databases, but those databases would be searchable
across agency lines. In this system, secrets are protected through the
design of the network and an "information rights management"
approach that controls access to the data, not access to the whole net-
work.An outstanding conceptual framework for this kind of "trusted
information network" has been developed by a task force of leading
professionals in national security, information technology, and law
assembled by the Markle Foundation. Its report has been widely dis-
cussed throughout the U.S. government, but has not yet been con-
verted into action.
effort to bring the major national security institutions into the infor-
mation revolution. He should coordinate the resolution of the legal,
policy, and technical issues across agencies to create a "trusted infor-
mation network."
only be able to modernize the stovepipes, not replace them.
of Management and Budget, a new National Intelligence Director
empowered to set common standards for information use throughout
the community, and a secretary of homeland security who helps