Criminal justice file sharing

Newsletter reader Jim Chaffee wrote in recently to describe his plan for a file sharing site that would allow several criminal justice systems to share data over the Web.

Chaffee operates a Web site for a juvenile justice organization (www.ajca.org), which records the interstate movement of delinquent youths and non-delinquent runaway youths, nationwide. He says file transfers involving some 20,000 of these juvenile cases per year have been, and continue to be, exchanged through the US Mail and some fax transmission.

"This is a very time-consuming process," Chaffee says. "I am seeking means to securely transfer case data electronically via the Web, and to collect the same data for analysis and archive."

According to Chaffee, two other criminal justice organizations with which he works have similar needs. But he points out that other than the major federal agencies such as the FBI and National Crime Information Center, there appears to be no infrastructure available that he could use as a model for such an undertaking.

Chaffee says he has been researching the implementation of VPNs to accomplish this task and came to realize P2P networking was applicable for more than just trading multimedia files.

"I am finding a large amount of info regards [peer-to-peer] on the Web, trying to synthesize some and thought I would send an inquiry your way," writes Chaffee. "I don't wish to re-invent the wheel if I can avoid doing so; any suggestions?"

Is there a secure, scalable file trading system out there that fits Chaffee's need? If you know of one, write in and let us know.