This Matrix Is Scary, Not Fun

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed. But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes. The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website.

What Is Matrix?
More Nonsense Arising Out of The Patriot Act Mentality

With the federal government having been effectively legislated and browbeaten out of the data mining business for capturing terrorists the activity has shifted to the states with Florida leading the way with a system called Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange).

Organizers said the system, dubbed Matrix, enables investigators to find patterns and links among people and events faster than ever before, combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. It would let authorities, for instance, instantly find the name and address of every brown-haired owner of a red Ford pickup truck in a 20-mile radius of a suspicious event.

Some might see this as the triumph of federalism and the power of distributed networks where no one single large entity is in charge. Some might even see this as signs of the inevitability of as surveillance and data collection technologies spread far and wide in society and people sitting at home are even recruited to watch critical facilities remotely.

The database is being developed by a company called Seisint which already markets a commercial database service called Accurint which is a database service for locating people and past and present addresses.

Accurint uses a name, past address, phone number or Social Security Number to obtain the current name, address and phone number of targeted subjects. Using proprietary compilation of data sources and association algorithms, Accurint’s ability to deliver high-quality matches and find rates is unparalleled. Accurint can also provide previous addresses and location information for relatives, associates, and neighbors. As a result, Accurint is the most accurate and detailed source for forward-looking and historical views of consumer contact information.

By leveraging unmatched capability for processing billions of records per second, Accurint has compiled the world’s largest set of accessible location data. Accurint searches more than 20 billion records that cover recent relocation to historical addresses dating back 30 years and more. Individual queries are supported via web and client applications. For high-volume requests, Accurint provides on-demand batch capabilities, drastically reducing the cost of searches. For direct legacy application access Accurint supports XML API's.

With its unique combination of data, association algorithms and search technology, Accurint offers the best-performing solution in the marketplace.

Many companies have large databases of records of their transactions and contacts with millions of people and organizations. It is not a big stretch to use these databases to do data mining to look for activity that correlates with patterns found in investigations of known terrorists.

Clearly grasping at straws the Cato Institute is peddling the idea that automated systems of collection and analysis of information will drain resources from more productive approaches to finding terrorists.

Florida's database is similar in many ways to the Pentagon's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness program. In "Total Information Awareness for the Ages," Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., director of technology policy, writes: "Ironically, the project could also increase security risks. Even the Pentagon's resources are limited: Most people are not terrorists, and it can be a costly diversion to attempt to monitor the torrent of chatter that will be generated by this misguided program. Terrorists already immerse themselves in mainstream society, even using their real names and official government documents. They can learn and anticipate the trigger patterns that will supposedly generate red flags, and then avoid them."

The Florida project will simultaneously automate information searches for commonplace police investigations and also bring together data that can be mined to patterns of potential terrorist activity. As computers become cheaper and more powerful and as communications costs fall as well the trend is clearly running in the direction where computer automation becomes increasingly more cost effective than traditional methods of police and intelligence work.

The Berkeley Intellectual Property Weblog is also worried.

But if each state collects and maintains citizen's data, each with different standards for correcting, aggregating and using the data, and if states string together their databases, as several states would like to collaborate with Florida to do (Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Utah so far in the MATRIX -- click here for their contacts list; and the District of Columbia and Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York in the DC program as reported by Spencer S. Hsu/WDC Post), I think we will have a far more dispersed and frightening problem than what the TIA proposed. Does this mean Safire, and Harrow do another round of columns, Congress and (hopefully) State Legislatures get involved to control this effort toward Too much surveillance (by Safire) of citizens? How effective can we as citizens be in asking for legislative oversight when there are so many different states and entities involved?

Things are spinning out of control? Woe is us? At the risk of sounding like I'm playing a broken record, these worrywarts show little sign of being familiar with science fiction writer David Brin's argument that the death of privacy is inevitable and our only choice is whether only governments or everyone will use the surveillance and data collection technologies which are continually advancing in sophistication and ease of use. In Brin's view we effectively face a choice between privacy and freedom. But those who scream loudest against government surveillance and data collection seem wholly unaware of Brin's analysis.

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"Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither"
Ben Franklin

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