Pentagon to adopt FBI's suspicious activity reporting system

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered the Defense Department to use the FBI’s eGuardian suspicious activity reporting system to record and track law-enforcement information about potential threats against the military or military installations.

Adoption of the eGuardian system, which is now deployed on a pilot basis, was one of the key recommendations of a review panel that looked at security on military installations in the wake of the Nov. 5, 2009, mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. The system is FBI-owned and will enable the sharing of unclassified information among federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.

At the time of the Fort Hood shootings, DOD was still searching for a replacement for the defunct Threat and Location Observation Notice  reporting system, which was terminated in August 2007. One of the issues raised during the follow-up to the shootings is whether the military had done a sufficient job of evaluating any pre-shooting warning signs from the alleged shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Data will be entered into eGuardian only by authorized personnel trained in the federal guidelines and FBI procedures protecting civil liberties, Gates said, and data will be reviewed to ensure that information based solely on ethnicity, race or religion is not entered into the system.

Gates directed the department to establish a plan and issue policy and procedures for the implementation of the system no later than June 30.