3. How will it work?
ALEISS members will use COPLINK® technology to collect, consolidate and share information from existing law enforcement databases across jurisdictions to help solve crimes.

It links incompatible law enforcement databases that currently don't "talk to each other" through a secure, intranet-based platform, and allows authorized users to search using known facts from an ongoing criminal investigation.

4. Why do you need it?
Short answer: COPLINK saves substantial time conducting criminal investigations, which translates into cost savings and also allows law enforcement to better direct manpower and keep more feet on the streets.

Long answer: Chasing down qualified leads in a criminal investigation is time consuming. It often takes days, weeks or more. Other cases go unsolved because connections between a suspect and a crime are not readily apparent. COPLINK reduces the search time of our existing criminal databases to a matter of minutes and helps keep criminals from falling through the cracks. The solution is also promising for use in prevention of domestic terrorism.

Statistics show that eighty percent of all crimes are committed by twenty percent of the criminal population - repeat offenders with prior arrest records or connections to other criminal incidents. COPLINK generates qualified leads from the databases we already use to track criminals that will help our investigators solve crimes faster.

COPLINK is a proven solution that has helped put murderers, repeat sex offenders and other criminals behind bars in the other jurisdictions around the country where it's in use. In Tucson Arizona where the system has been in use for several years, initial results from a productivity study indicate that COPLINK is generating labor savings at a 14:1 level.

5. How much does it cost?
$52,000 of the funding for the first phase of the initiative was provided by the State of Alaska from a pass-through federal grant for improving data interoperability between law enforcement agencies. The remaining $242,500 was provided, as a demonstration of new technologies, by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center - Northwest (NLECTC-NW), a program of the National Institute of Justice, a unit of the United States Department of Justice/Office of Justice Programs.

Additional Record Management Systems (RMS) will be added over time at a cost ranging from $16k-$50k per source depending on the type of data source and complexity of the integration. These are not licensing costs but one time costs for integrating additional data sources and do not reoccur.

The ALEISS contract with COPLINK includes annual maintenance and customer support which is about 18% of the actual costs.

Operational funding and technical support for ALEISS will be provided by NLECTC-NW for the first three years, as a demonstration of this new technology on a state-wide basis. Prior to the end of this period the ALEISS consortium will identify new funding sources or may consider assessing member agencies operational fees on a proportional basis. In 2007 the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police applied for and received a Byrne Grant to cover the costs for ALEISS.

6. What will phase I accomplish?
The first phase of the contract calls for migrating data from each ALEISS Agency's primary RMS databases into the ALEISS Node. Three additional phases, which will complete the connection of the entire state, will be implemented as additional funding is identified and becomes available.

7. What type of data will the system use?
The system will only include data from existing law enforcement databases, or Records Management Systems (RMS) such as, police reports, arrest records and traffic citations. Citizens who have not had any contact with law enforcement should not be in the database.

Non-verified information regarding suspected criminal activity, as might be housed by an "Intelligence System" will not be included in ALEISS, nor will any information from other data sources, such as credit reporting agencies or other commercial database sources.

8. Who will have access to the system?
COPLINK will be used for law enforcement purposes only. Only ALEISS consortium employees that have been subject to background screening will be allowed access to the COPLINK system. Background screenings will be fingerprint-based including checks of both the state and national criminal history repositories. If a felony conviction of any kind is found, access to COPLINK shall not be granted.

9. What steps are being taken to prevent abuse?
COPLINK creates a detailed audit trail by user for every search conducted. This serves two purposes.

1. Officers seeking to question or obtain a warrant on suspects identified through COPLINK are able to clearly demonstrate with hard facts how that person fits the criminal profile and how others were excluded.

2. The System Administrator is also able to monitor use for audit purposes to identify any abuse that would result in suspension of a user's access privileges under the terms established by the ALEISS consortium.

Additionally, as with the State of Alaska's Public Safety Information Network (APSIN), use of ALEISS will be regularly audited to ensure users are complying with applicable laws, regulations, policies and procedures.

10. How will access be controlled?
The ALEISS system will rely on the latest proven technology in high-security network administration, including advanced firewalls and encrypted transmission of information. User access is authenticated and password protected. All data transmitted is encrypted at the highest level available.

The network hosting ALEISS meets federal security guidelines, as it is also used to host similarly sensitive information (unrelated to and not connected with ALEISS) from a variety of federal agencies.

In addition, each participating agency has control over what data is shared, with whom and when. This can be applied at the individual user level, at the regional or state level or a combination of these access controls.

11. What do privacy advocates have to say about this?
Most privacy advocates are pragmatic and agree that law enforcement agencies need better analytical, information sharing and decision support tools to help solve crime and improve community safety. The debate when it comes to using technology has largely centered on what type of data is appropriate for inclusion in these systems, and what guidelines are in place to govern use and prevent abuse or security breaches.

Privacy advocates tend to express the most concern over systems that mingle commercially available private information such as credit reports with law enforcement records. The ALEISS system powered by COPLINK will ONLY include public data from existing law enforcement records and will be used for law enforcement purposes only. Citizens who have not had any incidents with law enforcement will not be in the database.

The ALEISS consortium puts a premium value on maintaining the public's trust. Members spent several months working together to establish privacy, security and responsibility protocols that will govern the use and operation of the system prior to agreeing to go forward with the effort. COPLINK's ability to restrict access to data based on individual user security clearance levels, and the sensitivity of the data itself, coupled with ongoing audit functionality supports our goals. We believe it's important to be an open book about what we're doing, and how we're doing it, and will continue to seek ways to improve as we go forward.

12. Where will the data be housed?
The ALEISS or COPLINK node where data is collected and consolidated will be housed in a secure data center at the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center - Northwest (NLECTC-NW) in Anchorage, Alaska. The Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police provides program oversigt.

Data sources that feed the system through a secure data link will continue to be housed and maintained by the source ALEISS agency. Records will be updated, added to, or deleted in accordance with each agency's policies to ensure the integrity of their own data. As data changes in an ALEISS agency's RMS, the change will be reflected in the ALEISS or COPLINK Node.

13. How is this different from federal Total Information Awareness (TIA), CAPPS II, or Matrix?
Information sources, privacy and security protections and an early commitment to developing responsible use protocols. (Refer to the answers to questions 5,7,8,9,10,11,12 for additional differentiators)

14. Do you anticipate participating in information sharing initiatives with other states or with the Federal Government?
Our priority is to provide better tools for Alaska's law enforcement agencies to fight crime and improve community safety. We're going to focus on doing that well as we implement each phase of this initiative, with a strong commitment to keeping the public's trust and protecting the privacy of our citizens. That is our only priority right now, but we will certainly look at anything that can enhance those efforts.

There are state and federal laws that impact information sharing initiatives with agencies outside of Alaska. Any future participation would require careful examination of those laws to determine whether or not and how such an initiative would have to be structured to comply with the law and the protection protocols established by the ALEISS consortium.

Law enforcement agencies in Alaska already work cooperatively with our colleagues in other states and at the federal level on criminal investigations as required. This cooperation will continue separate from the ALEISS initiative.

Top