FC: States' police databases continue where TIA left off

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

[How entrepreneurial of them! --Declan]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 10:22:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Richard Forno <rforno@infowarrior.org>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: For Politech


First TIA run by the feds, now TIA II run by the states. I guess it's try,
try, and try again to build the American Panopticon.

- rick
infowarrior.org


D.C., Four States to Share Law Enforcement, Other Records
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21710-2003Aug5.html

Authorities in the District and four large Eastern states plan to launch
an anti-terrorism data-sharing effort in September to enable federal,
state and local agencies to search instantly through millions of law
enforcement records, Mayor Anthony A. Williams said yesterday.

< snip >

By limiting the system to available law enforcement records and not
storing all available data in a central repository for information about
all Americans, organizers said they hope to avoid criticism from Congress
and privacy experts, who have said other federal data-mining systems
proposed for aviation and counter-terrorism are too intrusive.

Williams said the pilot program would share criminal justice information,
"not only for emergency preparedness, but for regular, garden-variety
crime-fighting." The mayor emphasized that the effort was one led by the
District and the states, not by the federal government. "It is on this
local level where we form these partnerships," he said.


U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database
'Matrix' Offers Law Agencies Faster Access to Americans' Personal Records
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21872-2003Aug5?language=printer

Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism database designed to
give law enforcement agencies around the country a powerful new tool to
analyze billions of records about both criminals and ordinary Americans.

Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find
patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before,
combining police records with commercially available collections of
personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities,
for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired
owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious
event.

The state-level program, aided by federal funding, is poised to expand
across the nation at a time when Congress has been sharply critical of
similar data-driven systems on the federal level, such as a Pentagon plan
for global surveillance and an air-passenger-screening system.

< snip >

The Justice Department has provided $4 million to expand the Matrix
program nationally and will provide the computer network for information
sharing among the states, according to documents and interviews. The
Department of Homeland Security has pledged $8 million, state officials
said.

At least 135 police agencies in the state have signed up for the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement database service, which began operation more
than a year ago. At least a dozen states -- including Pennsylvania, New
York and Michigan -- said they want to add their records.

< snip >

Matrix is short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. The
name was chosen somewhat whimsically by a Florida law enforcement officer,
an agency official said.

< snip >

Ramer added that he's never seen so powerful a system in his many years in
law enforcement. To replicate it "we'd have to go to 10,000 systems," he
said. "It would just take you forever."





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