STATE-​​RUN “TIA” EXPOSED

Long-​​time Defense Tech read­ers will be famil­iar with MATRIX — the data-​​mining project, run by 10 state gov­ern­ments, that’s eerily sim­i­lar to Total Information Awareness.
Now, the ACLU has a run­down of this creepy pro­gram, which combs through credit card trans­ac­tions, mar­riage records, and vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tion data to find alleged evil-​​doers. This report based mostly on news­pa­per arti­cles. But it’s the most com­plete pro­file to date of this largely-​​hidden pro­gram.
MATRIX (short for “Multistate Anti-​​Terrorism Information Exchange”) “is designed not only to build dossiers on all of our lives so they will be a key­stroke away for police and other gov­ern­ment offi­cials, but also to search through our dossiers and those of oth­ers in a hunt for pat­terns indica­tive of ter­ror­ist or other crim­i­nal activ­ity,” the report notes.
“Its scary,” says Phil Ramer, the intel­li­gence chief for Florida, which is tak­ing the lead on MATRIX. “It could be abused. I mean, I can call up every­thing about you, your pic­tures and pic­tures of your neighbors.”

October 31st, 2003 | Data Diving | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.