Developed by the U.S. Justice Department's Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative, this guide assists law enforcement agencies in determining whether they are in compliance with applicable privacy-related policies, procedures, rules, and guidelines while collecting and sharing intelligence and information needed to identify and respond to threats to the safety of the U.S. citizenry.
The target audience for this guide is local, State, and tribal law enforcement agencies with an intelligence enterprise or fusion center. The guide contains a suggested methodology for reviewing an agency's intelligence enterprise, so as to identify the high-liability areas of concern that should be included when performing the review. The guide also presents a checklist of questions that should be answered when conducting the compliance process; however, the checklist may not cover all laws, policies, and procedures that are applicable to a particular State or agency. Agencies are encouraged to expand and improve the checklist to include questions that are applicable to their particular jurisdiction's rules, standards, or policies, thereby making sure that the verification is comprehensive for their intelligence enterprise. The guide recommends that random and periodic (at least annual) internal or external compliance verification be conducted on an agency's intelligence enterprise in order to provide the needed transparency as well as guard against punitive ramifications. Individuals conducting the verification should review and assess the business practices of the intelligence enterprise in order to help identify weaknesses and gaps in the protection of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. A random sample of data should be reviewed in order to ensure that the agency's policies and procedures have been implemented and are being followed. One section of the guide focuses on the intelligence enterprise as a whole, and the second section addresses the intelligence enterprise's criminal intelligence system. Appended sample method for conducting the compliance verification and definitions of terms used within the verification document