Officials for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio are still wondering why the state plans to participate in a controversial law enforcement program and waiting for answers to their questions.
It took the Attorney General's office more than four months to respond to the ACLU's initial Freedom of Information Requests asking about Ohio's involvement in the Multi-state Anti-terrorism Information Exchange program or MATRIX, said Carrie Davis, staff attorney for the ACLU of Ohio.
Follow-up requests made to the Attorney General's office in March have still not been answered. Other unanswered requests were also made in March to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles and the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
Kim Norris, spokeswoman for the Attorney General's office, said the office has been responsive to the ACLU and plans on turning over state records to the MATRIX program.
Norris said the program is a collection of data in one
easy-to-use search engine available to law enforcement officials.
Seisint, Inc., a data management company in Boca Raton, Fla., compiles information --such as property records, bankruptcy filings and federal terrorist watch lists --into one database which can be easily searched by law enforcement officials, said the company's vice president Bill Shrewsbury.
Norris said the Attorney General's office would allow Ohio's criminal history records --records of arrests and convictions -to be used in the MATRIX program.
Susan Raber, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, said driver's license and motor vehicle registration records would also be used.
The MATRIX program was originally funded by two federal grants totaling $12 million -$4 million from the Department of Justice and $8 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
The program still runs on that grant money -Ohio does not have to pay to participate, Norris said.
But with the number of participating states dropping, many are concerned the federal government might not continue its funding -leaving the bill to the states.
Once 16 states strong, the program's participants have now dwindled to five -Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania -and ACLU officials want to know why Ohio is still on the short list.
(There are) such huge accuracy concerns Davis said. Eleven other states have seen that this is a problem. Why haven't Ohio and Gov. Taft followed in their footsteps?
Taft's spokesman Orest Holubec said the governor thinks MATRIX could be a vital tool for law enforcement and in the fight against terrorism.
Seisint started purchasing records from the Ohio Department of Public Safety in October of 2002, Raber said. As of March, the company has bought more than eight million driver's license records and more than 10 million vehicle registration records -a total cost of more than $60,000.
Much of the information contained in the MATRIX database is already public information, Shrewsbury said. Seisint buys such information in bulk and sells the service to other companies, such as collection agencies, who can search the information more easily. One service the company offers -Accurint -shares much of its information with the MATRIX database.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement monitors the MATRIX system and all the information it contains, Shrewsbury said, and criminal background checks are performed on everyone involved with the program.
Seisint does not charge the states for the handling of their information, he said.
Davis said the program is rife with accuracy, privacy and security concerns and its funding has never been clearly defined.
We don't know what data is gathered (in MATRIX)
how it's used or who has access to it
she said. We want to know what information the state is turning over.
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Chuck Bowen
