TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Saturday, May 22, 2004

ACLU May 20, 2004:

The American Civil Liberties Union today released documents containing disturbing new revelations about the MATRIX database surveillance program, including the fact that it was under the direct managerial control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and that Florida Governor Jeb Bush gave a personal briefing on the program to Vice President Dick Cheney.
[...]
"We were surprised to learn that DHS is playing a central role not only in funding this program, but also in managing it," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. "The federal government’s involvement is eerily reminiscent of the Pentagon’s ‘Total Information Awareness’ data-mining program, which was based on the same concept of sorting through everyone’s data in an attempt to identify terrorists. Congress shut down TIA, and it should shut down the Matrix as well."
[...]"We have long been appalled at Florida’s seemingly central role in developing and pushing this intrusive system in which a government file is created on everyone, whether they are a terrorist suspect or completely innocent of any suspicion," said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida. "But perhaps even more disturbing, this revelation suggests that Florida has been no more than a tool of the federal authorities."

MATRIX (the Multistate Anti-TeRrorism Information eXchange) is the latest data-mining program to emerge from the government. This surveillance system combines information about individuals from government databases and private-sector data companies, and makes that data available for search by government officials to comb through the millions of file.

| Posted at 22:22 | PERMA-LINK |

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