Navy Database Tracks Civilians' Parking Tickets, Fender-Benders 96
schwit1 (797399) writes with this excerpt from the Washington Examiner: "A parking ticket, traffic citation or involvement in a minor fender-bender are enough to get a person's name and other personal information logged into a massive, obscure federal database run by the U.S. military.
The Law Enforcement Information Exchange, or LinX, has already amassed 506.3 million law enforcement records ranging from criminal histories and arrest reports to field information cards filled out by cops on the beat even when no crime has occurred."
Re:Relevant (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is the parent being modded down. That is 100% relevant. This site is going down.
The Army is spying on people too (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is not the database, the problem is who's running it. The military has zero business spying on civilians. The CiA doesn't like the competition.
Re:Relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a bunch of NSA paid agents and just simply US military people (and incidentally, Russian security people too; have a look at some of the comments on articles about the Ukraine all over the internet). Just like with Microsoft's shills, since they are being paid and probably even have special automated notification systems when a new story comes up, they come straight in a the beginning and mod things they don't like to zero in the hope they never get noticed.
This means that if you have mod points then the first thing you should do is look for reasonable -1 or 0 rated comments against these organisations. They don't even have to be good; just reasonable - normal comments should end up around 1 or 2. Only after that mod up the good comments.
Data sharing applications (Score:3, Insightful)
LiNX is one of a number of data sharing systems in use today. It works with local law enforcement agencies to warehouse data across different jurisdictions so that they can see each other's data. What's strange is it's under the Navy. The FBI runs another system called the National Data Exhange (n-DEx) which does the same thing but more generally. LiNX is used more for port cities. Commercial vendors like IBM provide their CopLink product to states and local jurisdictions to share data as well (see MODEX project in state of Colorado). Some states like Ohio have their statewide data sharing system that serves to aggregate data for NDEX. These are all systems operated by state/federal law enforcement agnecies that capture when you've done something wrong. This is different from the surveillance activities of the NSA that capture information indiscriminately.
Re:1996 (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya, I am pretty sure they use this information to weed out unsavories during the enlistment process.
Um, what? So they're concerned you might not be Navy material because of speeding tickets, and unfit to join the ranks that commit sexual assault?
Sounds a bit like Alice's Restaurant.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_restaurant
Re:Data sharing applications (Score:4, Insightful)
And this business of "field information cards" is especially worrisome. A cop can write down anything on a card he likes, and since no action is taken on a card, its very existence would be unknown to you - unless he/she choses to show it you. There is no way of knowing what (mis)information is being generated about you by any random cop. One wonders whether this data, once "in the system" is ever completely, totally purged.