Wednesday, September 24, 2003
From an Associated Press report: [A] far-reaching database is quietly taking shape with the participation of more than a dozen states -- and $12 million in federal funds . . .
Dubbed Matrix, the database has been in use for a year and a half in Florida . . . It cross-references the state's driving records and restricted police files with billions of pieces of public and private data, including credit and property records. ...
Matrix houses restricted police and government files on a colossal database that sits in the offices of Seisint, a Boca Raton, Fla., company founded by millionaire Hank Asher, who police say flew planeloads of drugs into the country in the early 1980s.
"It's federally funded, it's guarded by state police but it's on private property... very interesting," said Christopher Slobogin, a University of Florida law professor and expert in privacy issues. "If it's federally funded, the federal government obviously has a huge interest in it."
[...]
As a dozen more states pool their criminal and government files with Florida's, the Matrix database is expanding in size and power. Organizers hope to coax more states to join. . .
California and Texas dropped out, citing, among other things, worries over housing sensitive files at Seisint. . . .
 [T]he project is billed as a tool for state and local police, but organizers are considering giving access to the Central Intelligence Agency, said Phil Ramer, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's intelligence office.
In the 1970s, Congress barred the CIA from scanning files on average Americans.
See also Another Bush hires another drug runner for another Orwellian database. .....---
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