NEW YORK -- A federally funded crime database run by seven states is increasingly looking to privacy advocates as a potent substitute for the data-mining program the Pentagon scrapped after public rebuke.
Law enforcement officials and the private company that manages the database, known as Matrix, say it merely streamlines police access to information about suspects that authorities have long been able to get from disparate sources.
Newly emerging facts about the program, including documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, indicate it also could be made to sift through vast stores of Americans' personal data and proactively finger crime and terrorism suspects.
Combining state records with databases owned by Seisint Inc., Matrix details the property, boats and Internet domains people own, their address history, utility connections, bankruptcies, liens and business filings, according to an August report by the Georgia state Office of Homeland Security.
The report, which was once posted on a state Web site, offers a broader glimpse of Matrix - short for the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange - than its guardians are generally willing to make public.
This is a major program with very large ambitions
and it needs to be publicly examined. We shouldn't be forced to read tea leaves said Barry Steinhardt, who heads the ACLU's technology and liberty program.
The August report touts Matrix's ability to display information quickly, along with pictures of some people on file, and perform analysis: The user can easily see relationships between people places and things that were previously impossible to discern.
With minimal input and the push of a button
witnesses
associates
relatives and suspects can be identified and located
adds the report, which was cited in a December Supreme Court filing by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
References to Matrix's analysis capabilities also emerged in documents obtained by the ACLU under the open-records law in Pennsylvania, one of the participating states.
Among the files were two 2003 memorandums of understanding between Pennsylvania officials and Florida police that discussed how Matrix would be used for both criminal investigations and intelligence purposes.
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