MATRIX - A Dossier for Every Person in Utah 650
jxs2151 writes: "According to the Deseret Morning News former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt signed Utah's 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child and didn't bother to tell anyone. According to the article MATRIX -- Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange '...cross-references government records from both public and private databases, putting together a dossier on individuals for use by law enforcement.' The state's homeland security specialist dismisses concerns: '...any data gleaned for Utah's participation in MATRIX is information already available to law enforcement.'
The Utah legislature is trying to figure out how to get the state out of the program but the question is how was the Governor able to enroll the -whole state- without anyone knowing?"
Making a big noise here in Utah.... (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, from the article: 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.
The fact that credit history is included and is documented along with these other aspects of identity and is run and managed by a private company is disturbing leading me to wonder what connections Gov. Leavitt might have with this company.
Finally, as noted in the article our current Gov., Olene Walker (she was Gov. Leavitt's assistant governor before he headed off to become a Bush appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency), apparently knew absolutely nothing about the project. As governor, Leavitt should have been representing the people of Utah, but what is it that he has done here?
Matrix in Georgia (Score:5, Interesting)
Here, it is the reverse situation. The governor (Sonny Perdue) has now ordered the state twice to *stop* participating in the Matrix program. The first order was ignored. I wonder if the second will go un-heeded as well?
Re:Private company? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because you don't live in Utah doesn't mean you don't have something with them. I know my mortgage company holds some database or another with them.
I would think, since they offer services such as Law enforcement Risk management Fraud detection Identity verification Insurance investigations Legal research Customer data hygiene and integration Skip tracing and asset identification , that they do cross referencing among all their databases the same as the credit companies, people finding services and so forth.
Re:Making a big noise here in Utah.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let the other mindless Church-drones deal with it ( by carrying on his legacy of course).
one of 13 states? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am waiting for the scandal (Score:2, Interesting)
Lots of data will be collected about people's daily habits. That data somehow ends up in the hands of the Mormon church. They then start punishing members for things like buying coffee in stores, renting porn, not tithing a full 10%, and going to R rated movies. Then it gets leaked where all of this data came from.
Mormons are taught to support the Government. It will take quite a bit to get them to really fight against such a draconian intrusion into their lives. They tend to gravitate to authoritarianism as it is.
Solution (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Matrix in Georgia (Score:4, Interesting)
*not* a call to all hackers and crackers (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that we know that Seisint [seisint.com] is compiling a database of all relevant information on *everyone* living in Utah, how long do we think it'll be before one of the many hackers/crackers (possibly sponsored by organized crime, then again equally likely to be doing it just for the kudos) breaks through their corporate security (cough smoke-and-mirrors, if they're like most other companies) and steals the identity of an entire state at once?
Of course " Utah was one of 13 states that hopped on board the pilot program last June -- funded with $12 million in federal grants. But since then, several states have pulled out of the project, citing privacy and financial concerns."
So we're not even talking about just one single state !
C'mon people - fame and fortune, kudos from the slashdot crowd, and your very own entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
I can just see it now Worlds Largest Simultaneous Identity Theft
Re:Thats it... (Score:1, Interesting)
East Germany (Score:1, Interesting)
Pretty soon, President Putin will start lecturing President Bush on human rights issues...
Re:Can I read Darl's? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Moron about Mormons (Score:3, Interesting)
And, as a side note, isn't it most interesting how the Prophet at the time that the people Utah of desired Statehood received a message from God that polygamy was now against His will, and that particular epiphany came shortly after the United States Congress told the Mormons that if they continued polygamy, they would be denied statehood? I know, silly me, but I found it interesting, anyway.
Re:Private company? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:when governments remove civil liberties (Score:5, Interesting)
The real threat to freedom in the USA are the corporations.. big business.
With the exception of the law-enforcement and intelligence communities, the government isn't very interested in our freedoms.
But it's not only by working through congress the businesses get our rights handed over to them, it's through the courts.
With their armies of lawyers, they manipulate the system so that their propaganda is "free speech", whereas if you say something against them it's "slander".
Not to mention abuse of the DMCA, and any other law they can find.
As a Utah resident (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to say that I am absolutely outraged at what Gov. Leavitt has apparently done. I wasn't particularly happy with him over his stand on allowing the storage of nuclear waste in our state (something that apparently was a qualification for head of the Environmental Protection Agency).
IANAL, so I wonder - would something like this be grounds for some sort of class action lawsuit?
If it is, count me in.
It amazes me the things we in the US allow our government to do to us in the name of security:
If we the government keeps getting away with passing legislation like this, the terrorists win, and the government *becomes* the terrorists.
Re:when governments remove civil liberties (Score:4, Interesting)
Get to it.
America, Freed from Freedom (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do all these stories about the loss of freedoms in America remind me of every other dictatorship and oppressive regime?
Still remember what GIGO stands for? Google up "more people watch TV" and see.
Re:Facts? (Score:5, Interesting)
That was twenty years ago.
This information has been there for decades. That it is two ergs easier to do today and includes all the backwater states that used mimeographs until the 90's is pretty trivial.
Re:how did the Governor do it? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is coming. what we need is a method to slap companies who sell or give data to any other company. We also need Law enforcement to need a signed court order, for specific individuals.
Thats where the fight should be, on how this data is handled, and on signifigant retribution to those who sell it.
For example, it it is a corporation, pull there corp. charter.
Private company, dved 75% of there assets equally among all the people on the lise.
Politician? removal from office. 3 years prison
Re:Connect the dot-products (Score:3, Interesting)
I grew up in the land of the free, home of the brave. I don't know how much of the world has changed in my lifetime, but my perspective has changed dramatically.
Every day on the radio, I listen to people arguing to keep immigrant kids out of schools. I hear about civil rights being stripped, reorganized, recategorized, and minimized on a daily basis.
Quite frankly, I am beginning to see the US becoming so much like Nazi germany that I'm afraid of what the next decade will bring.
We are a free people, and a generally happy and prosperous country because of it.
As more of that changes and we move either to a 1984 type state or even worse to a fascist dicatatorship we will be facing revolution.
I will not allow this country to turn into a state where censorship and government oversight are the norm, and people are to afraid of the government to speak up. (oh wait, that already happened. what are we doing here people!)
Here's to hoping the next president is a lame duck.
Re:what the fsck are you smoking???? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't forget Kerry is a skull and bones man just like the traitor Bush. Don't expect anytyhing positive if he wins.
Re:Connect the dot-products (Score:4, Interesting)
- Poindexter, when he was part of the DOD and DARPA, devises Total Information Awareness, which will collect vast amounts of data on everyone and then use data mining to spot terrorists, or maybe just to spy on everyone.
- In parallel Florida, presumably led by Jeb Bush, starts funding MATRIX to do pretty much the same thing though its less ambitious. Ironicly MATRIX is devised by a suspected drug smuggler and the person that helped rig the Florida election by disenfranchising black voters.
- Congress is enraged when TIA becomes public and kills it.
- The DOD changes the name to Terrorist Information Awareness
- As nearly as I can tell Congress is allowing Terrorist Information Awareness to continue but under severe restraints:
http://www.darpa.mil/body/tia/tia_report_page.h
In particular TIA is allowed to use only these two kinds of data:
(a) foreign intelligence and counter intelligence information legally obtained and usable by the Federal Government under existing law
(b) wholly synthetic (artificial) data that has been generated, for research purposes only, to resemble and model real-world patterns of behavior.
It appears Congress must have forbidden using real data on American citizens.
Meanwhile MATRIX is doing basicly the thing Congress forbad TIA from doing. MATRIX was state funded but now the DOJ and Homeland Security are chipping in $12 million.
You have to wonder if Congress realizes what kind of suckers they've been played for.
Re: Moron about Mormons (Score:1, Interesting)
how ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they did it to discredit the voices of those that protest the act? "Oh, they're just geeks with a Matrix obsession, and are overreacting because they're all anarchists."
Otherwise, why else name it MATRIX? You'd think they'd want to avoid anhy sort of association with complete thought control. Right?
Or is this simply a sign of how incredibly subdued the average citizen is already?
Personal Data (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess the points I'm making are:
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There was a really cool upside to this system. It really could have been a benefit to the doctors and patients in providing them better care. It could, and also would, have been used to deny care to cuts costs.
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Corporations generally do not care about data security until the lack of said security jeapordizes their bottom line or places them at legal risk.
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If the system ever DID make it into production, the information contained within could have easily been made available to the governement and/or highest bidder -- as is the case with the company running the MATRIX system.
The way I see it is that the benefits don't outway the risks. Just because we can doesn't mean we should.Re: Moron about Mormons (Score:2, Interesting)
If you think the court system is an "objective third party," you have more faith in it than I do. The court system is designed so that people with differing opinions on an issue can present their arguments, and a jury of opinionated citizens and an opinionated judge decide on it. The idea is not that this exercise infallibly arrives at "objective truth," but that some sort of consensus can be arrived at from among the various subjective interpretations.
I see no reason why discussions of religion should be any different. If you only hear the official story told by members and leaders of the religion itself, you won't hear anything they don't want you to hear. Unless you listen to people critical of the religion (including many former members), you'll never be able to make an informed decision.