Privacy fears erode support for anticrime network

Matrix, a controversial multistate program that hoped to find criminals or terrorists by sifting through databases of public and private information, has lost more than two-thirds of its member states and appears to be withering under its critics' attacks.

The Matrix program--the name is derived from Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange--was originally developed for the state of Florida by Seisint, a Florida company, in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At its peak, 16 states were members, and the program received pledges of $12 million from the federal Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

Supporters of Matrix envisioned it as a powerful computer-driven program that could integrate information from disparate sources--like vehicle registrations, driver's license data, criminal history and real estate records--and analyze it for patterns of activity that could help law enforcement investigations. Promotional materials for the company put it this way: "When enough seemingly insignificant data is analyzed against billions of data elements, the invisible becomes visible."

This kind of system has long been the stuff of dreams for high-technology companies, which saw in it both a valuable service to society and a chance to recapture profits after a long technology downturn. But it also drew strong opposition from civil liberties organizations, which found Orwellian overtones in the collection and analysis of database information that would include people who have committed no crime. The American Civil Liberties Union filed Freedom of Information Act requests to uncover the inner workings of the system, and other high-tech policy groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have voiced concerns.

The announcements made last week by New York and Wisconsin that they were withdrawing from Matrix means that only five states remain actively involved--Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio.

Utah has suspended its participation, and in January Gov. Olene S. Walker appointed an oversight committee to evaluate security and privacy issues.

Supporters of Matrix, including the Florida officials who have worked with it from the beginning, say that it merely gives law enforcement agencies quicker access to data that they already have the legal authority to see. "It's an extremely valuable tool," said Mark Zadra, the chief of investigations for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

States provide information like arrests and convictions, Social Security numbers, driver's license data and birth and marriage records. Seisint, the company that created Matrix, then adds what the company has described as "in excess of 7 billion public records from thousands of locations on U.S. individuals and businesses, including information about neighbors, relatives and associates."

Matrix officials have declined to describe all the data that goes into the system, but they insist that nothing goes into Matrix that police would need a subpoena or other judicial order to obtain, like full credit reports or library lending records.

Officials in Florida point to success stories like a hit-and-run accident involving a white, 2000-2002 Chevrolet Avalanche that left the scene. The system was able to provide a list of all the vehicles fitting that description within a 10-mile radius of the accident. Investigators were able to find the Chevrolet, according to Florida officials.

But opponents of the program say the ability of computer networks to combine and sift mountains of data greatly amplifies police surveillance power, putting innocent people at greater risk of being entangled in data dragnets. The problem is compounded, they say, in a world where many aspects of daily life leave online traces.

In a recent report on the program, the ACLU called Matrix "a body blow to the core American principle that the government will leave people alone unless it has good reason to suspect them of wrongdoing."

The same critics have called Matrix a state-run version of Total Information Awareness, a program that was being developed in the Pentagon to search an even broader array of databases for patterns of terrorist activity. Congress froze financing for that program last year in response to a public outcry over the privacy implications of the system.

Opponents of the Pentagon program regarded the development of Matrix as a sign that the bubble was simply moving under the wallpaper: with the federal program blocked, some surveillance functions were being shifted to the states. And as Matrix started to draw attention, member states began to drop out.

"When these programs get exposed to the light of day, they get shut down," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the ACLU.

Steinhardt said that his organization was worried that other, similar programs might be operating more stealthily. "While we're gratified by the demise of TIA and the continuing collapse of Matrix, there's a much larger phenomenon of widespread surveillance that still occurs out there," he said. "What we're not sure about is what's still operating underground."

In leaving the program, New York said the network's shrinking size was a deciding factor. A March 9 letter from Steven F. Cumoletti, the assistant deputy superintendent of the New York State Police, to Commissioner Guy Tunnell of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and chairman of the Matrix executive committee, said, "Unfortunately, instead of increasing the number of participating states over time to improve the potential benefits of the pilot, to date nearly two-thirds of the initial states have opted out of the project."

James W. McMahon, director of the New York State Office of Public Security, said in an interview that the program "seemed to be going backwards instead of going forward." New York, he said, had never provided information on its own citizens to the program.

Matrix has been especially controversial because its technology was developed by Seisint, a private company whose founder, Hank Asher, was involved in the 1980s with a group of cocaine smugglers, according to court records. He was not charged, and became an informant. Asher resigned from the company last year.

Most of the states have cited tight budgets in their withdrawal from the program. "Money is always an issue, regardless of who you deal with, even in the most noble of causes," said Clay Jester, the Matrix coordinator for the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, the nonprofit organization that administers the program.

"If you see there's a significant investment you're going to have to make down the road, you may choose not to see the potential benefits," he said. "When it comes down to new cars or this great new database application, it's easier to show somebody a car."

But Liz Krueger, a New York state senator from Manhattan, who opposed Matrix, said that the real issue was privacy. "Even in a time of increased security, we have to be perhaps even more vigilant to make sure that fundamental rights to privacy are protected," said Krueger, a Democrat. "The more people knew about it and thought about it, the more dangerous they thought this exercise was."

Zadra, the Florida investigator, said that the program was intended for fighting crime, not surveillance, and that its creators had included privacy safeguards. "We've gone overboard to put in security, and put in privacy controls," he said. He acknowledged that the system could be abused by some law enforcement officers, but said that every profession had bad actors. Matrix, he said, was too valuable to abandon because of such concerns.

He said that the program was "not quite as effective" if states do not provide their data, but said that there was enough information to be gleaned from other publicly available databases to make the powerful search capabilities of Matrix valuable. He said, for example, that even if a state refused to provide driver's license information to Matrix, that information is often available from private databases.

"If there was no other state data but Florida's, we would want to be continuing the project with no other data but Florida's," he said.

Zadra said proponents of the program were "moving forward, and meeting with other states that have expressed interest." But he acknowledged that no announcements of new states coming into the program were imminent.

McMahon, the New York law enforcement official, said the importance of a program like Matrix could best be shown in the case of a child's kidnapping, when "you've got minutes instead of hours" to prevent a tragedy.

"You might be able to save somebody's life in producing the information you need," he suggested, as in, for instance, quickly finding the names of convicted sex offenders who own a specific model of car.

Zadra also used kidnapping as an example of database use, citing the possibility of a law enforcement official's having to tell the parents of a kidnapped child that "'we did have a tool, but we can't use that tool anymore, and I can't find your daughter.' How sad would that be?"

Others can worry about hypothetical threats to privacy, he said. "Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to solve crimes with the best technology available."

Ultimately, he said, "It really comes down to trust. Do you trust law enforcement to do what is right?"