ChoicePoint inks FBI analysis software deal

ChoicePoint Inc. won a five-year, $12 million contract with the FBI to furnish software that helps analyze how criminal organizations operate. The Alphraretta, Ga., company will provide products from its subsidiary i2 Inc.

ChoicePoint, a major data aggregator that culls information from dozens of public databases and distributes it to corporations and government agencies, links its information with i2's Analyst's Notebook tool and other software.

I2's visual analysis tools allow investigators to create link diagrams showing the relationships between individuals, vehicles, addresses, crimes, corporations, gang information, weapons and similar data that can help form a picture of how a criminal enterprise operates.

The FBI will receive access to "a large number of additional licenses for Analyst's Notebook 6 as well as the full suite of i2 complementary solutions, including i2 Visual Notebook, i2 Bridge, i2 ChartExplorer, i2 iBase and i2 TextChart," the company said.

The i2 tools can connect automatically to the databases of Autotrack XP from ChoicePoint's KnowX LLC subsidiary and the databases of LexisNexis Group, the legal publishing arm of the Anglo-Dutch publishing company Reed Elsevier, according to law enforcement sources. Those connections allow i2 to populate its link diagrams from vast databases.

Analyst's Notebook is the leading tool of its kind to help intelligence analysts probe the inner workings of criminal enterprises, according to law enforcement sources. The Justice Department has provided funding for licenses of the i2 products to state and local law enforcement agencies.

ChoicePoint has more than 5,000 employees and had annual sales of $1 billion in fiscal 2005, according to Hoover's Online of Austin, Texas.

Wilson P. Dizard III is a senior writer for Washington Technology's sister publication, Government Computer News.