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GOVERNMENT STILL USING 'MATRIX' DATABASE

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prezhorusin04:
Police still using controversial database
Boon to cops, bane of privacy groups, Matrix search engine lives on
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8542613/
DAVID ROYSE
Associated Press Writer
 
Updated: 8:06 p.m. ET July 11, 2005
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - When the federal government in April stopped funding a database that lets police quickly see public records and commercially collected information on Americans, privacy advocates celebrated what they saw as a victory against overzealousness in the fight against terrorism.
 
But a few states are pressing forward with a similar system, continuing to look for ways to quickly search through a trove of data — from driver's license photos to phone numbers to information about people's cars. Their argument in seeking to keep the Matrix database alive in some form: it's too important for solving crimes to give up on.
 
Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania still use software that lets investigators quickly cull through much of the data about people that reside in cyberspace. However, without the federal grant for the Matrix data-sharing system, they won't be routinely searching through digital files from other states — at least for now.
 
Privacy advocates still don't like the idea, saying government shouldn't have easy access to so much information about people who haven't done anything wrong.
 
But law officers bent on keeping the Matrix alive say the information is already out there anyway for companies to use for less noble purposes. Law enforcement has always used such information; it just never had a big computer search tool to quickly find links between people and places.
 
"The media uses that data, attorneys use it, banks use it," said Mark Zadra, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent in charge of the system. "We've been using online data like that for 10 to 15 years. What this does is link those. ... What took law enforcement so long to use technology and get into the 21st century?"
 
Matrix — the ominous name is shorthand for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange — was born as an anti-terrorism tool in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
 
Created by Florida law enforcement officials working with a one-time drug-running pilot-turned-millionaire computer whiz named Hank Asher, it was conceived as a way for states to combine data they have on people — driving records and criminal histories, for example — with similar records from other states.
 
The company that Asher founded but no longer works for, Seisint Inc., also added to Matrix information gathered in the private sector, including some of what credit card companies collect, such as names, addresses and Social Security numbers — though actual credit histories were not included.
 
Together, the program would give states a powerful tool that could link someone to several addresses or vehicles, and possibly to other people who lived at those same houses or drove the same car.
 
Those links could help thwart terrorism or solve crimes in which witnesses could provide only partial information, like half of a license plate and the make of a car. The technology is credited in part with helping police crack the Washington, D.C., sniper case in 2002.
 
"It very quickly allows you to identify identities, associates, things like that," said Lt. Col. Ralph Periandi, deputy commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. "Two or three other people who might be connected."
 
Matrix impressed federal officials enough that the program was seeded with $12 million from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Thirteen states eventually signed on or expressed interest in feeding their data into the system, representing half the U.S. population.
 
But over time, several states pulled out, partly because of concerns about the cost or laws governing the transfer of data out of state. California's attorney general decided Matrix "offends fundamental rights of privacy."
 
Those objections were nothing compared to the criticism Matrix encountered from the right and the left, including from the American Civil Liberties Union.
 
"It is essentially an electronic file on everyone whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not," said Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU in Florida. "I can't think of anything more un-American."

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