Cross posted at
BlogWood: Norwood's Nattering
Jeb!'s Blackshirts, the thuggish FDLE, wants access to your credit report.
In an attempt to revive the much reviled and recently departed MATRIX program, the FDLE is putting together a database that will give law enforcement agencies instant access to everyone's credit history and other personal information. That's everyone - the innocent as well suspected wrongdoers.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is seeking proposals from companies to help expand a database for police to include credit and insurance information, even for those never accused of a crime.
The added information would be an extension of the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange project known as Matrix that began with 13 states and officially ended in April. Matrix combined criminal histories and public records such as drivers' licenses and property information.
The FDLE is asking companies how they would provide police across Florida with access to portions of people's credit reports and wants to find out which records "are readily available to law enforcement without subpoena or court order."
The FDLE proposal is seeking credit header information, including a person's name, current and previous address, phone number, date of birth and Social Security number.
"We are legally entitled to that," said Mark Zadra, chief of investigations for FDLE's Office of Statewide Intelligence.
Zadra said that information could be critical for authorities to find a current address of a suspect.
The request to vendors went out April 12. Bids are due May 16.
The American Civil Liberties Union cited privacy concerns and information theft as arguments against the expansion. It called FDLE's request "a continuing hunger to get its hands on as much information as possible."
Commercial databases include information on about 98 percent of Americans, said Jay Stanley, spokesman for the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project.
"Do we want to just let that go or do we want to take steps to protect it?" Stanley asked.
This is a very bad idea.
MATRIX was riddled with problems, thus the decision to let it die. Sold as an anti-terrorism tool, MATRIX was actually designed to gather information on ordinary citizens, and the potential for abuse due to fraud or even simple human error was just too great to be ignored, even in the post-911 Ashcroft fueled paranoiac rush to trash every cherished constitutionally guaranteed bit of freedom that we Americans claim to enjoy.
More information from the ACLU on MATRIX: Myths and Reality.
And a good Daily Kos diary provides some more background.