Friday, January 30, 2004
Big Brother really is watching you
It sounds like a sci-fi thriller: a super computer program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child — everything from birth and marriage and divorce history to hunting licenses and car license plates. Even every address you have lived at, on down to the color of your hair. Unfortunately, it's not science fiction. It exists, and (ironically) it's called MATRIX. The people of Utah in the US are the unwitting guinea pigs in this experiment - they were signed up to it by former Governor Mike Leavitt. Unfortunately, he didn't bother to tell anybody what he was doing, and the proverbial is only just starting to hit the rotating blades.
So what is MATRIX? The initials stand for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. It's an intranet database regarded as the nation's largest cyber-compilation of personal records. The program essentially cross-references government records from both public and private databases, putting together a dossier on individuals for use by law enforcement. It is touted as an efficient crime-fighting tool that allows agencies to access information with just a nimble fingertip.
Searchable databases allow law enforcement agents to probe for people using Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, property records, motor vehicle information and credit history. The information is collected by states and forwarded to a database in Florida, where a private company, Seisint Inc., builds and manages the database.
Now, right there, warning bells should be sounding. A private company managing the most sensitive of personal data? Wooeee! Knowing how private companies sell mailing lists at the drop of a dollar bill, I have severe reservations about how private this stuff will remain, let alone the rights and wrongs of government being able to collect so much data on me. (Okay, I don't live in the USA, but I use the Internet extensively, and I would be most surprised if I'm not well detailed somewhere in the bowels of a US database.)
This is only one of a number of major Big Brother projects being developed which are using the need to combat terrorism as a huge excuse to destroy civil liberty. Another is CAPPS II, which could be operating in US airports as soon as next month, the Washington Post reports. This is the long-threatened system that will, as you check in for a flight, take your full name, home address and telephone number, date of birth and travel itinerary and check it against a set of existing government and private databases to see if you are (probably) who you claim to be and if you have any known connection to bad guys. See here for a fuller rundown on what's going on.
It sounds like a sci-fi thriller: a super computer program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child — everything from birth and marriage and divorce history to hunting licenses and car license plates. Even every address you have lived at, on down to the color of your hair. Unfortunately, it's not science fiction. It exists, and (ironically) it's called MATRIX. The people of Utah in the US are the unwitting guinea pigs in this experiment - they were signed up to it by former Governor Mike Leavitt. Unfortunately, he didn't bother to tell anybody what he was doing, and the proverbial is only just starting to hit the rotating blades.
So what is MATRIX? The initials stand for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. It's an intranet database regarded as the nation's largest cyber-compilation of personal records. The program essentially cross-references government records from both public and private databases, putting together a dossier on individuals for use by law enforcement. It is touted as an efficient crime-fighting tool that allows agencies to access information with just a nimble fingertip.
Searchable databases allow law enforcement agents to probe for people using Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, property records, motor vehicle information and credit history. The information is collected by states and forwarded to a database in Florida, where a private company, Seisint Inc., builds and manages the database.
Now, right there, warning bells should be sounding. A private company managing the most sensitive of personal data? Wooeee! Knowing how private companies sell mailing lists at the drop of a dollar bill, I have severe reservations about how private this stuff will remain, let alone the rights and wrongs of government being able to collect so much data on me. (Okay, I don't live in the USA, but I use the Internet extensively, and I would be most surprised if I'm not well detailed somewhere in the bowels of a US database.)
This is only one of a number of major Big Brother projects being developed which are using the need to combat terrorism as a huge excuse to destroy civil liberty. Another is CAPPS II, which could be operating in US airports as soon as next month, the Washington Post reports. This is the long-threatened system that will, as you check in for a flight, take your full name, home address and telephone number, date of birth and travel itinerary and check it against a set of existing government and private databases to see if you are (probably) who you claim to be and if you have any known connection to bad guys. See here for a fuller rundown on what's going on.
