Rules in information sharing for security
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895820960199 |
| Published date | 01 April 2022 |
| Date | 01 April 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895820960199
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2022, Vol. 22(2) 304 –322
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1748895820960199
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Rules in information
sharing for security
Janet Chan
Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation, UNSW Sydney, Australia
Sarah Logan
The Australian National University, Australia
Lyria Bennett Moses
Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation, UNSW Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Information sharing has become a central concern for security agencies since 9/11. Previous research
has identified a number of barriers to information sharing among agencies: a combination of legal
or policy constraints, interagency rivalry and mistrust, and technology. Drawing on ideas from the
sociology of information and trust, this article conceptualises the sharing/withholding of information
between agencies as dependent on rules as a system of trust. Adapting Richard Ericson’s framework
of the different contexts of rule-following and making use of an Australian case study, the article
demonstrates how law, culture and technology are intertwined in constraining or enabling access to
information. The implications of this model for legal and policy interventions are discussed.
Keywords
Information sharing, rules, security agencies, trust
Introduction
Information1 sharing has become a central concern for security agencies since 9/11 (Jones,
2007). Increasingly, task forces and public inquiries have called for agencies to facilitate
greater data sharing in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the face of serious
security threats (e.g. Markle Foundation, 2006; Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law
Enforcement, 2013). For security agencies, data sharing has been regarded as crucial for
Corresponding author:
Janet Chan, Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Email: j.chan@unsw.edu.au
960199CRJ0010.1177/1748895820960199Criminology & Criminal JusticeChan et al.
research-article2020
Article
Chan et al. 305
meeting the challenges of globalised threats of terrorism, the transnational attacks of
cybercrime and the organised nature of serious crime (Brown, 2018; Jenkins et al., 2014;
Nolan, 2015). Yet the reluctance of agents to share information has long been a problem
documented in the policing literature (Brown, 2018; Chan, 2003; Sanders et al., 2015;
Sheptycki, 2004; Taylor and Russell, 2012). A variety of ‘barriers’ to data sharing have
been offered: technology, funding, governance and policy, business models of technology
providers (Hollywood and Winkelman, 2015), legal constraints, a sense of ownership,
interagency competition and mistrust (Brown, 2018; Chan and Bennett Moses, 2017), and
organisational structure and culture (Abrahamson and Goodman-Delahunty, 2014;
Glomset et al., 2007). However, as Jones (2007) points out in relation to national security
intelligence, there are flaws in the underlying logic and the implementation of a presump-
tion in favour of information sharing: a larger flow of information does not always make
agencies ‘smarter’; it is equally possible to overwhelm the capacity of agencies to sepa-
rate the signals from the noise and lead to inappropriate responses.
This article aims to clarify the dynamics of information sharing through a conceptual
model drawn from the sociology of information that sees the sharing and withholding of
information as contingent on rules as a system of trust. To conceptualise how decisions
about information sharing can be dependent on rules, we draw on Richard Ericson’s
(2007b) framework that examines the myriad contexts of rule-following in policing: the
following of formal rules, exercising discretion, drawing on cultural knowledge, com-
plying with communication formats and operating without rules. We adopt Ericson’s
conception of rules which includes legislation and other recognised sources of law as
well as formal bureaucratic or administrative rules promulgated within particular agen-
cies but excludes rules of thumb derived from police culture (Ericson, 2007b: 370–372).
Synthesising this literature, we postulate that information sharing in an age of datafica-
tion is a practice that depends on the interaction of formal rules, culture and technology.
We make use of an Australian case study that uses technology to facilitate data sharing
(see section ‘Research methods’) to demonstrate how formal rules, culture and technol-
ogy are intertwined in constraining or enabling access to information (section ‘Information
sharing: The role of formal rules, culture and technology’). The implications of this
model for legal and policy interventions are discussed in the concluding section.
Conceptualising rules in information sharing
Secrecy
Instead of focusing on information sharing, we find it useful to draw our initial inspira-
tion from the sociology of secrecy. Simmel’s (1906) paper, from which subsequent work
by others has developed, posits that both knowledge and secrecy are central to social
relationships. While having some knowledge of the other person is the precondition of a
relationship, it is impossible to know everything about the person. At the same time, this
partial knowledge is often sufficient for social relationships to be formed. Simmel sug-
gests that while the sharing of secrets in simple societies depends on direct knowledge
about the trustworthiness of the receiver of the information, sharing in modern, complex
societies needs to rely on a ‘credit-economy’ or a system of trust (Simmel, 1906: 450).
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