Privacy concerns grow as states create "Matrix" database [priv]

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

---

To: declan () well com
From: Earl Hood <earl () earlhood com>
Reply-To: Earl Hood <earl () earlhood com>
Subject: AP story on 'Matrix' database
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:53:18 -0500


Previous politech post:
  http://www.politechbot.com/p-05011.html

<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/09/24/concerns_about_citizen_privacy_grow_as_states_create_matrix_database/>

  Concerns about citizen privacy grow as states create 'Matrix' database
  By Jim Krane, Associated Press, 9/24/2003

  NEW YORK -- While privacy worries are frustrating the Pentagon's plans
  for a far-reaching database to combat terrorism, a similar project
  is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen
  states -- and $12 million in federal funds. The database project,
  created so states and local authorities can track would-be terrorists
  as well as criminal fugitives, is being built and housed in the offices
  of a private company but will be open to some federal law enforcers
  and perhaps even US intelligence agencies.

  Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half
  in Florida, where police praise the crime-fighting tool as nimble
  and exhaustive. It cross-references the state's driving records and
  restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private
  data, including credit and property records.

  But privacy advocates, officials in two states, and a competing data
  vendor have branded Matrix as playing fast and loose with Americans'
  private details.

  They say that Matrix houses restricted police and government files on
  colossal databases that sit in the offices of Seisint Inc., a Boca
  Raton, Fla., company founded by a millionaire who police say flew
  planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s.

  "It's federally funded, it's guarded by state police but it's on
  private property? That's very interesting," said Christopher Slobogin,
  a University of Florida law professor and expert in privacy issues.

  ...

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