The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) cited breakdowns in information sharing and the failure to fuse pertinent intelligence (i.e., "connecting the dots") as key factors in the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. A bipartisan task force of former policy makers and senior executives described the challenge facing the government in "the new era of national security we have entered," as "the challenge of using information effectively, linking collection with sound and imaginative analysis derived from multiple perspectives, and employing cutting edge technology to support end-users, from emergency responders to Presidents. In other words, we need to mobilize information." In the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), Congress mandated the creation of an Information Sharing Environment (commonly known as the "ISE"). Congress intended the ISE to be a "decentralized, distributed, and coordinated environment ... with 'applicable legal standards relating to privacy and civil liberties.'" The act also directed that the ISE provide and facilitate the means of sharing terrorism information among all appropriate federal, state, local, and tribal entities and the private sector through the use of policy guidelines and technologies. A Program Manager for the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) was established and placed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). As required by Section 1016(h) of the IRTPA, the PM-ISE submitted to Congress three annual reports on the extent to which the ISE has been implemented. The Obama Administration reaffirmed effective information sharing as a "top priority" and established within the Executive Office of the President the position of Senior Director for Information Sharing Policy. Also after 9/11, states and major urban areas established intelligence fusion centers to coordinate the gathering, analysis, and dissemination of law enforcement, homeland security, public safety, and terrorism intelligence and analysis. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), this activity by fusion centers contributes to the ISE. Fusion centers have been defined as a "collaborative effort of two or more Federal, state, local, or tribal government agencies that combines resources, expertise, or information with the goal of maximizing the ability of such agencies to detect, prevent, investigate, apprehend, and respond to criminal or terrorist activity." As of December 2011, DHS notes that 72 centers are operational within the United States and its territories. DHS has supported these centers with grant funding and has assigned intelligence officers to them. Information sharing is ... about establishing a collaborative environment with a clear purpose: ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time under the right conditions to enable informed decisions. The imperative for the exchange of terrorism-related intelligence information among law enforcement and security officials at all levels of government is founded on three propositions. The first is that any terrorist attack in the homeland will necessarily occur in a community within a state or tribal area, and the initial response to it will be by state, local, and tribal emergency responders and law enforcement officials. Second, the plotting and preparation for a terrorist attack within the United States (such as surveillance of a target, acquisition and transport of weapons or explosives, and even the recruitment of participants) will also occur within communities. Every day, officers at thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies collect and document information regarding behaviors, incidents, and other suspicious activity associated with crime including terrorism. A joint study by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and senior law enforcement officials concluded that "[t]he gathering, processing, reporting, analyzing, and sharing of suspicious activity is critical to preventing crimes, including those associated with domestic and international terrorism." Third, "[i]nformation acquired for one purpose, or under one set of authorities, might provide unique insights when combined, in accordance with applicable law, with seemingly unrelated information from other sources." This recognizes that "relevant information comes from a much wider range of sources … and it is difficult to know a priori what information will prove relevant to analysts or useful to users. For this reason, it is necessary to create a more horizontal, cooperative, and fluid process for intelligence collection, sharing, and analysis." Or, as the 9/11 Commission concluded, "A 'smart' government would integrate all sources of information to see the enemy as a whole." In a nationwide survey conducted in 2006, the Justice Research and Statistics Association (JRSA) found that there are currently in place or under development 266 separate systems that share information about crime, including terrorism, at the national, regional, and state levels. The boom in the development of these systems has led to concern that "it is hard to know what information is being shared and who is sharing it. In many cases, multiple systems are being developed to cover overlapping areas." Appendix A provides a brief overview of significant information-sharing systems. Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) contain information about criminal activity that may also reveal terrorist pre-operational planning. These reports could be based on an officer's observation of suspicious behavior, 9-1-1 calls, or other tips and leads provided to police by citizens. Many believe that the sharing of SARs among all levels of government and combining them with other intelligence information will help uncover terrorist plots within the United States. Every day, more than 800,000 police officers collect and document information regarding behaviors, incidents, and other suspicious activity associated with crime, including terrorism. "On the beat or mobile, cops are sensitive to things that do not look right or do not sound right," says one police chief. "[R]emember, it was a rookie cop on a routine check that resulted in the arrest of Eric Robert Rudolph in North Carolina despite the enormous commitment of federal resources." Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was arrested after a traffic stop when Oklahoma State Trooper Charles J. Hanger noticed that McVeigh's yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis had no license plate. Using his home state as an example, a former U.S. Attorney maintains that "evidence of a potential terrorist threat or organized criminal enterprise is far more likely to be found in the incidental contact with the 10,000 police officers in the state of Washington than by the less than 150 FBI agents assigned to the Seattle Field Division." In addition to the arrests of Rudolph and McVeigh, state and local law enforcement officers, in the normal course of their duties, have uncovered or disrupted the following terrorist plots: The Japanese Red Army terrorist, Yū Kikumura, was arrested on April 12, 1988, at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike by a state trooper who thought he was acting suspiciously. He was found carrying three 18-inch (46-cm) pipe bombs loaded with gunpowder. Prosecutors said Kikumura had planned to bomb a military recruitment office in New York City. In July 2005, two undercover police officers noticed two men acting suspiciously near a gas station in Torrance, CA. After the men robbed the gas station, they were arrested by the undercover officers. A search of the arrested men's apartment revealed that they were members of the terrorist group Jamiyyat Ul-Islan Is-Saheeh. They were planning to bomb synagogues in Los Angeles and were financing their operation through armed robberies. In August 4, 2007, two Egyptians studying in Florida were stopped by police for a traffic violation near Goose Creek, SC. They were found to have explosives in their vehicle. A subsequent investigation revealed that one of the students had made and placed on the Internet a video demonstrating how to use a doll to conceal an improvised explosive device. The student later plead guilty to "providing material support to terrorism." One major city police department commander notes that the role of police officers has evolved after 9/11. They are now also "first preventers" of terrorism, and this represents a "dramatic paradigm shift," both for the federal government and for the local and state agencies themselves. The need for intelligence information to support the police in this terrorism prevention role is considered crucial. A national information-sharing system, says a former U.S. Attorney, should also ensure that "federal agencies have access to information maintained in state and local agencies that may be pertinent to terrorist threats ... the benefit that would accrue to U.S. national security in having police records integrated in a strictly controlled fashion with sensitive federal data would be nothing short of remarkable." He cites the example of Hani Hanjoor, the hijacker who piloted American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. Six weeks prior to the 9/11 attacks, Hanjoor had been issued a speeding ticket by a local police department in the Washington, DC, area. Had a system been in place to share this information with the FBI, it may have alerted them that a suspected Al Qaeda operative was present within the National Capital Region. Also prior to September 11, 2001, local police officers made separate traffic stops of two other 9/11 hijackers—Mohammed Atta and Ziad Samir Jarrah. Like Hanjoor, both were in violation of their immigration status. There was even an outstanding arrest warrant on Atta for failing to appear on a previous traffic citation. The NSI is a framework to support the reporting of suspicious activity—from the point of initial observation to the point where the information is available in the information-sharing environment. It supports one of the core principles of the 2007 National Strategy for Information Sharing , that information sharing "be woven into all aspects of the counterterrorism activity, including preventive and protective actions, actionable responses, criminal and counterterrorism investigative activities, event preparedness, and response to and recovery from catastrophic events." The NSI responds to the strategy's mandate that the federal government support the development of a nationwide capacity for a standardized, integrated approach to gathering, documenting, processing, analyzing, and sharing information about suspicious activity that is potentially terrorism-related while protecting the privacy and civil liberties of Americans.