Others won’t collaborate, and constraints limit enforcement.

Hoffman ‘20 [Bruce and Jacob Ware; June 21; Hoffman is the Shelby Cullom and Kathryn W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program; Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service; Lawfare, “The Challenges of Effective Counterterrorism Intelligence in the 2020s,” https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/challenges-effective-counterterrorism-intelligence-2020s]//av

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security told the IG that “federal entities continue to be reluctant to share information into the public collection,” the IG wrote. The officials said some entities have a preference to share “exclusively” within the federal government and others have policy requirements to only share with “their relevant sector among eligible stakeholders.”

The IG also identified tensions among government agencies regarding what information is being shared. Department of Commerce officials said they were concerned that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency could be sharing additional information but did not explain further. Both Justice Department and Pentagon officials told the IG that some entities are hesitant to share cyber threat information because it could jeopardize ongoing operations.

These concerns extend to the private sector. DOJ officials said that some private companies still worry that sharing information could raise legal and competitive issues, including potential anti-trust concerns. Others believe that cooperating with law enforcement could lead to negative business and regulatory consequences.

DOJ officials told the IG that “public perception of federal government actions in cyberspace, especially those of law enforcement agencies, is mixed.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to face obstacles in taking information that is classified in making it available in non-classified contexts.

Officials at the Commerce, Justice and Defense Departments noted that “cross-domain sharing” of information obtained through classified sources could not be used to mitigate potential risks on unclassified systems because agencies lacked the ability to transfer them to unclassified environments. DOJ officials, meanwhile, told the IG that they lacked the “appropriate facility security clearance to receive the information.”

Another perennial issue is that over-classification makes it difficult to share cyber threat information, said officials from the DOD, Treasury officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Officials from DOJ, DOD and DHS all noted either a lack of funding, resources or technology like automation to process information. These resource constraints mean that the deluge of data may not be getting to the right agency or person at the right time to use.