A system that collects all publicly available information on drivers into a single, searchable database has collected a new opponent - the American Civil Liberties Union.
The system, known as Matrix, combines a huge amount of information on every person who holds a driver's license, including current and past address, telephone numbers, car information, known associates and neighbors, speeding tickets, even marriages and divorces. Press reports indicated that a number of states had committed to and then withdrawn from sharing information with Matrix, primarily over privacy concerns.
The Matrix system is operated by a private firm called Seisint, which also will be charged with keeping track of who sees the information. The multistate project has drawn praise from many in law enforcement for its ability to help track criminals, and criticism from privacy advocates who fear so much personal information in the hands of either a private firm or public officials. Law-enforcement officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all the information is available to police now, just not in one place where it can be easily searched.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue recently announced that his state would not transfer any additional information to the system.
"I have held serious concerns about the privacy issues involved with this project all along, and have decided it is in the best interest of the people of Georgia that our state have no further participation in the Matrix pilot project," Perdue said in a statement. "The criminal, prison, and sexual predator information previously submitted will remain part of the database. This information is relevant to the crime fighting purpose of the pilot project, but personal information of law-abiding citizens is not."
The American Civil Liberties Union set its sites on the system Oct. 30. In a statement, the union, a national organization dedicated to protecting constitution rights, called the Matrix database a "Big Brother" program and called for lawmakers to end it.
The ACLU compared Matrix with the federal government's Total Information Awareness program. That system, proposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was designed to integrate a large number and wide variety of information sources on individual American citizens so they could be sifted by software to detect patterns of activity that could predict whether that individual might be involved in terrorist activity.
Proponents of TIA said the system might have fingered the 9/11 terrorists while they were preparing their attack. Critics said the system would go too far in reversing curbs placed on domestic intelligence gathering that came to light in the Watergate era. The House of Representatives sided with critics earlier this year when it put an end to TIA.
"Whether this is a deliberate end-run around the congressional action or not, this is TIA," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, told The Journal Constitution.
The ACLU has launched requests under the Freedom of Information Act regarding the use of the system from states still taking part - and receiving a portion of $12 million in federal grants intended to fund Matrix - which includes New York, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The program also operates in Florida and Utah.
"Members of Congress - who voted to close down TIA in the belief that they were ending this kind of data mining surveillance - must demand more information about The Matrix," Steinhardt said in a statement. "And then they should shut it down too."
--by Mark H. Reddig, associate editor
Mark Reddig can be reached at mark_reddig@landlinemag.com.
