Through a real estate Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) formed in February 2003, building owners and managers report “malicious” incidents to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The agency, which receives such reports from all over the country, can detect patterns among the reports that could clue them in to concerted efforts among terrorists in different locations.
In turn, DHS tips those owners and managers when those patterns flag a particular city or type of activity. Apartment executives, for instance, knew details of suspect Jose Padilla’s alleged plot to use natural gas in sealed apartments to ignite the buildings long before they were released to the public, says Roger Platt, senior vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Real Estate Roundtable, an association of real estate CEOs and chairs of major trade associations. The roundtable’s members also are members of the real estate ISAC.
Some of them have government security clearances so they can receive classified information about terror-related plans involving apartment buildings.
“Sharing information so everybody knows what everybody else knows gives the government a fuller perspective on what’s happening at the property level,” says Carey Brazeman, director of communications for the ISAC. For more information about the real estate ISAC, visit www.reisac.org.
