Database Tagged 120,000 as Possible Terrorist Suspects

Before helping to start the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave United States and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists, resulting in some investigations and arrests. The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a critical selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the project.

Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint the sole contractor on the $12 million federal project. Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system was ultimately kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns. But new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that the authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are raising questions about Matrix's potential power.

"Assuming they have in fact abandoned the terrorist quotient, there's nothing that stops them from bringing it back," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, which learned about the list of 120,000 through its own records request in Utah.

Matrix, short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, combines state records and data culled by Seisint to give investigators fast access to information on crime and terrorism suspects. It was begun in 2002. Because the system includes information on innocent people as well as known criminals, Matrix has drawn objections from liberal and conservative privacy groups. Utah and at least eight other states have pulled out, leaving Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania still in the program. Officials involved with Matrix have said that the statistical method was removed from the final product. "I'll put my 26 years of law enforcement experience on the line," said Mark Zadra, chief investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "It is not in there."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/national/21database.html

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120,000 LOL What a bunch of Losers

I never would have guessed there was 120,000 members of DU :silly:

Teachers and pro-choice women, too. Don't forget them!

That should add up to about 120,000.

They are trying to triple that number. Seems that they are going to succeed. More torture and fighting in holy cities should help out.

at the polls nov. 2.

I wonder if those "marked Americans" can be disclosed. Or is this another tidbit of information that will be masked under "National Security" classification.

Welcome to 1940 Germany. Heil!

That's just Orwellian.

Is that like a political suspect?

I would guess.

Nixon had an "enemies list". Had the FBI and IRS harass them. Just taking it to a whole new level.

:-(

Move along.:evilgrin:

GREG PALAST: Yeah, well, Amy, and Juan, it's De Ja Vu all over again, I can't believe it. My good friend Hank Asher is back with another alias this one is Seisint. For those who read my book or Michael Moore's back, database technologies, his old company is the organization that came up with the list now up to 97,000 names of supposed felons in Florida who are scrubbed off the voter roles before the presidential election, it turns out almost every name on that list was an innocent person, they were named as felons by this company, by Hank Asher's company, named at felons, they weren't felons, they lost their vote and, surprise, most of them were African Americans. And that fixed our election.

Hank is back. Now Hank was thrown off the board of the company he founded by the U.S. Drug enforcement agency. Because of his connections to Bahamian drug dealers, they said if that guy is on we don't want anything to do with him because of his connections. So here he is back with a different costume on. And up to the same tricks, first he is such a wonderful guy, of course first thing he's doing is jumping on the September 11th war on terror bandwagon see if he can suck a few bucks out that have one, too. So the first thing he's doing is giving away supposedly free software that's exactly what his last company did with Database Technologies to strub the voter roles.

http://freewebhosting.hostdepartment.com/t/tomyum/local_html/theMatrix.html

He has since left that company.

Check out ACLU's site on this:

http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=14240&c=130

Look at the map:



4 out of 5 states still running Matrix are 2004 battleground states.