NCIC News

[trader () cellar org <trader () cellar org>]

I sent this to CuD, but thought that Telecom readers may also be
interested.
 
{Philadelphia Inquirer} - 07/29/93
 
CRIMINAL RECORDS ARE VULNERABLE TO ABUSE, CONGRESS IS WARNED
 
Sometimes the information is for sale, the GAO said.  It called for
greater security.
 
By Lawrence L. Knutson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
WASHINGTON -- In Arizona, a former police officer gained access to
print-outs from the FBI's National Crime Information Center, tracked
down his estranged girlfriend and murdered her.
 
In Pennsylvania, a computer operator used the system to conduct
background searches for her drug-dealer boyfriend, who wanted to learn
if new clients were undercover agents.
 
In Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland and other states, private
investigators bought data from insiders with authorized access to the
criminal-record system.
 
These examples were presented to the House Judiciary and Government
Operations Committeess yesterday by the General Accounting Office,
which concluded that the criminal-records system is vulnerable to
widespread misuse.
 
The GAO recommended that Congress enact legislation with "strong
criminal sanctions" barring the misuse of the criminal record files
and that the FBI encourage state users to enhance security.
 
Laurie E. Ekstrand, the GAO's associate director for administration of
justice issues, said that while the FBI and the states do not keep
adequate records, "we did obtain sufficient examples of misuse to
indicate that such misuse occurred throughout the system."
 
"Furthermore, all the reported misuse incidents involve insiders,
while none involved outside [computer] hackers," she said.
 
"It appears that there are employers, insurers, lawyers or
investigators who are willing to pay for illegal access to personal
information, and there are insiders who are willing to supply the
data," said Rep. Gary Condit (D., Calif.) summing up the GAO's
findings.
 
The National Crime Information Center, with 24 million records, is the
nation's largest computerized criminal justice information system.
Its 14 separate files contain an extensive range of data, including
information about fugitives, stolen vehicles and missing persons.
 
The largest single file, known as "the III file" gives users access to
17 million criminal-history information records maintained in separate
state systems.
 
The GAO said more than 19,000 federal, state and local law enforcement
agencies in the U.S. and Canada, using 97,000 terminals, have direct
access to the system.
 
The GAO called the Arizona case the most extreme example of misuse it
uncovered.
 
The agency said investigators learned that the former police officer
was able to locate his estranged girlfriend using data provided from
the national records system by three people working in different law
enforcement agencies.
 
"After an investigation, the printouts provided by the three
individuals were discovered and they were identified, prosecuted and
convicted," the GAO said.
 
Other examples provided by the GAO:
 
    - In Maine, a police officer used the system to conduct a background
      check on one of his wife's employees who was then fired for not
      disclosing his criminal record
 
    - In Iowa, a dozen cases of misuse were reported over the last two
      years.  All involved computer operators conducting background
      searches on friends or relatives.
 
    - In New York state, an employee of a law enforcement agency provided
      criminal history information to be used by a local politician against
      political opponents.
 
    - In Pennsylvania, a police officer "accessed and widely disseminated"
      a fellow officer's criminal history record.
 
    - In South Carolina, a law enforcement agency conducted background
      searches on members of the City Council.
 
                          -------------

[Moderator's Note: Be aware however that much information people don't
like having released is considered public record, and that includes
criminal histories. There are perhaps right ways and wrong ways to go
about getting the information, but criminal background information on
any person can be obtained quite legally, and you don't have to be a
law enforcement officer to get it. Here is why: In the United States,
our constitution calls for *open, public trials*. To wit, anyone can
walk into a courtroom, sit down and observe a trial in progress.
Records are kept of trials (we call them transcripts) and the same
rules which provide that trials are open to the public say that by
extension, transcripts can be read by anyone who wants to get it and
read it later. The court may charge a fee for its expense in making
the copy, but pay the fee and you get the record. 

Now no one is going to traipse around the country, state by state and
county by county looking to see if you are a criminal, a deadbeat or
whatever. What happens is that nearly every community has at least one
practioner of records research. Send them a note plus their fee and
*they* will walk over to the courthouse, pull the file and fax it to
you. Many researchers have cooperative arrangements with other
researchers. You pull files in your community that I need and I'll
pull files here for you. This then lead to computerized databases of
perfectly open, legally obtained information on criminal records
(among other things) in much the same credit bureaus work with each
other. 

So you don't have to get into confidential records illegally to get
what you want to find out, you just have to know where to go for
*legal, public* files which say the same thing or the essence thereof.
If your record in the Podunk Circuit Court says Judge Greene sent you
away for ten years for refusing to select a default one plus carrier,
I don't have to have an illicit contact in the NCIC or law enforcement
to tell me the same thing at some risk to my own freedom if I get
caught snooping!  Remember, you can have all the information you want
on anyone quite legally. Public records abound. Learn to use them. PAT]