The White House announced its new Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime on Monday which urges increased integration and communication of US and international police forces.
Agencies that have different mandates can often fall short of effective cooperation, which can hinder governments in the fight against organized crime. The same is true on an international scale, where states’ governments need to work more closely together when dealing with transnational organized crime.
The strategy aims to create more effective means of information sharing among agencies in the US and around the globe that combat organized crime. The US Cyber Crimes Center will be responsible for collecting, analyzing and distributing pertinent information among such agencies.
According to the strategy, the US National Security Agency (NSA) is also cooperating with the International Organized Crime Intelligence and Operations Center (IOC-2) to harmonize existing databases already controlled by U.S. law enforcement agencies
The NSA will also employ social networking sites to track members of organized criminal organizations, by developing profiles of individuals as well as companies and institutions with links to organize crime, similar to the OCCRP’s People of Interest project. This will spread information to the general public and serve as information resources for police agencies to more efficiently recognize and combat organized crime.
