Homeland Security Editing and Proofreading Services

A suspicious activity report may describe a man photographing a bridge, taking notes and returning three times over two weeks, without stating what distinguished his photography from that of a hobbyist, a student or a structural engineer with legitimate business there, or what the three visits add to a description that fits thousands of harmless people. The report is filed, indexed and retained, and the man's name now resides in a system designed to identify threats, attached to behavior in which thousands of people engage innocently.

The documents we edit for Homeland Security

Suspicious activity reports and their review, threat assessment and warning products, fusion center bulletins and information-sharing products, and after-action reports following an exercise or a real event all become part of a permanent file, and each is edited here first. Our work also covers interagency coordination and liaison documentation and training material explaining reporting thresholds to frontline staff. Our editors attend to writing that determines whose name enters a system, and why.

What the editing involves

A stated connection to criminal or terrorist activity distinguishes a report worth retaining from one that records ordinary behavior under a suspicious label, and the characteristic failure is a report that describes the activity while leaving the suspicion unstated. Photographing a bridge is not the finding; what made the photography suspicious in context is the finding, and a report that omits it has reported nothing.

A report must state what raised the behavior above an innocent explanation, because "acting suspiciously" is not an observation, and a reviewer reading the file six months later cannot test a claim for which no basis is given. Behavior is better described in neutral, specific language than in characterizations that presume intent. "Loitering" and "standing near the service entrance for four minutes" describe the same event, but only the first has already reached a conclusion.

Identifying details belong in a report only where they bear on the assessment. A report recording ethnicity, dress or accent without stated relevance invites the profiling the threshold exists to prevent. A report should also separate what was observed from what was inferred, because the two carry different weight and a reviewer needs to know which is which. An officer who writes that a man "was casing the bridge" has recorded an inference; one who writes that he photographed the same span from three positions has recorded an observation.

The retention threshold should be applied consistently and stated in the report: a specific, articulable connection to unlawful activity rather than general unease. Reports that do not meet the threshold are better documented as not meeting it than reworded until they pass. A closing line reading "no nexus to criminal or terrorist activity identified, not retained" requires one sentence and keeps a name out of the index, whereas the same file closed with "subject engaged in apparent pre-operational surveillance" places that name in it for years. Reports written in this way protect both the usefulness of the system and the people who should never have entered it.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

All material sent to us is treated in confidence, including reports, assessments and personnel information. We are editors, not intelligence analysts, law enforcement officers or legal specialists, and we offer no opinion on threat assessment, retention decisions or legal thresholds. Our role is to ensure that the stated basis for suspicion actually appears in the report.