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Florida's Version Of TIA May Spread To Other States
Annoying Cowwart writes "Looks like TIA is coming back, this time through the by-the States-but-all-together backdoor. Now called M.A.T.R.I.X. ('Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange'). See the
Washington Post article for details. I wonder: do they have to try hard to find such apt names for their projects or does it come naturally? (For German speakers, there is another article about this in Der Spiegel.)"
The Skynet funding bill just passed.
Considering that this is coming around "through the back door" I'd suggest a change from "the over-your-shoulder dept."...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
You mean that there are people whose job it is to come up with these stupid acronyms?
That makes my life so much easier. I thought I was going to have to break into each organization one by one and go through old memos to figure out which weenie first proposed each one before I could cleanly and silently exterminate them.
If these people actually congregate and have offices, I can get a group rate. Awesome.
lysergically yours
Multistatee
Anti
Terrorism
Information
Exchang
Now, how the hell do you get MATRIX out of that?
More like MATIE, as in:
"ARR MATIE, we be getting the blackmail goods on the serfs, arrr!"
www.eFax.com are spammers
Melchior-1, Balthasar-2, and Casper-3 just entered QA testing. It's expected that when all 3 systems are deployed to production, the M.A.T.R.I.X system will use the MAGI computers to determine if the citizen in question should be eliminated.
FYI, TIA = Total Information Awareness
Next time someone says "The Matrix has you", they probably won't be lying. Of course, you'll know all too well, when the CIA goons come crashing through the front door.
So, do you kill the first six, then run from rooftop to rooftop in a mad dash to the payphone, or do you do what nobody else has ever done -- stay and fight?
--
Things like this seem to me to only hurt the innocent. I mean, given that everyone can now read about this existing, any half-witted criminal would get a haircut, steal a new car and do something far away from home, right? I mean, if someone didn't take precautions such as these given this system, then they would probably be the type of criminal who would leave other evidence everywhere. This seems to have a ton of privacy implications and would target a lot of innocent people who, just say, happened to own red trucks or whatever the case may be, without targetting the actual criminals. What a waste. And they used my tax dollars to pay for a stupid, incorrect acronym, too. Grrr...
I think it's a bit much to push this all on one family, especially since it's only one guy running the state. Besides, the wheels for all of this were set in motion by the last guy, and if you look a bit closer at the people involved you realize many of them are Democrats.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Putting it that extreme way is short sighted, to be polite.
Having not total control over every citizen almost certainly leads to more crime by the people, but that is the cost of more freedom. More control to the government and you have almost certainly more crimes by the government/and or companies.
And they will probably hurt us citizens more in the long term. Want examples? Google for yourself, or ask. But I'm too lazy to write them all down here.
IMHO law enforcement should be more effective and should not work by gathering information about everyone and then doing some data mining.
In 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI suspended information service contracts with an earlier Asher-run company because of concerns about his past, according to law enforcement sources. The Chicago Tribune reported in 1987 that court documents in a federal drug case said defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who identified Asher as a pilot and onetime smuggler, offered him as an informant.
Jennie Khoen, a spokeswoman for the Florida department, said yesterday that the agency knew about Asher's "history with drug smuggling," including his work as an informant. Moore said his department "knew about Mr. Asher's past."
Maybe Asher can watch the fox guarding the hen house while he's at it....
Actually, if you read only the first letters, it spells "MATIE". I suppose they weren't going for much of a pirate theme though. "Yarr, matie, we be catchin' us some terrorists, arr.."
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
I won't join any organizations like the ACLU to protect my freedoms! NO! I'm going to be an armchair critic and let the government erode my freedoms!
Karma whorin' since 1999
Acronym
Main Entry: acronym
Pronunciation: 'a-kr&-"nim
Function: noun
Etymology: acr- + -onym
Date: 1943
: a word (as NATO, radar, or snafu) formed from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term.
(emphasis mine).
M.A.T.R.I.X is not an acronym.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Sure, you may joke, but there's an important reason for government surveillance of consumer habits.
2 3
Terrorists are everywhere. Yes, even in your breakfast cereal. Did you ever doubt it when they started checking supermarket discount records?
Now you tell me: who's going to protect you when terrorists hitch a ride straight to your basement in that new Sears washer box?
http://safetystate.com/ss.cgi?action=material&id=
Last week the news said airlines were looking at the credit agency and medical insurance reports of every passenger. People with low credit scroes were flagged for additional scrutiny. I guess because these are easy databases to access, not because they are informative.
At least they picked a name that should strike the proper level of fear into joe citizen. When it was TIA no one had a clue, it was almost as good as the PATRIOT Act (who could vote against being a patriot right?). But with a name like MATRIX thanks to the media machine people will naturally associate it with total helpless control and loss of basic rights.
This program will be quickly dropped, the politicians will say it was all that guys idea *point long finger* and it'll come up again under the name "USA FLUFFY BUNNIES AND PEACE ON EARTH FOR EVERYONE Act"
Vote no on USA FLUFFY BUNNIES AND PEACE ON EARTH FOR EVERYONE!
And what if they *gasp* get it wrong?
And what about when someone who shouldn't gets access to the system and either farms details, or better yet, frames you?
And what about when you may actually have a reason to organise a rebellion because your government has turned your country into a police state the KGB would envy?
I've lived with real terrorism all my life - I was 5 minutes away from being killed on one occasion I know of for certain (Manchester IRA bombing) and probably more. As far as I'm concerned this "keeping track of YOU so they can't blow you up" is nothing more than a way to monitor and control a nation, it has nothing to do with stopping terrorists.
States Archive of Terrorist Actions Network
OR
S.A.T.A.N
Yeah... that's it
On the one hand, anything that helps law enforcement officers track down and lock up criminal types is a Good Thing, and anything that helps them identify something dangerous in progress is also Good.
BUT,
On the other hand, there are a wide range of different kinds of cops, and at least half of them aren't the sort of people who should BE cops. They're like the dickhead who used to cruise around my neighborhood on the fourth of july, "confiscating" everyone's fireworks and bringing them home to his own kids, or the cop who keeps a "drop gun" handy in case he fucks up and shoots the wrong person, or the cops who you hear about from time to time, who shake down hookers and drug dealers for their own piece of the pie (pardon the pun).
The problem is, cops are people. And, like all people, some are good and some are bad. Some are REALLY bad. Put a tool like this in their hands, without sufficient top-down control (and you know, they're just going to give that lip service) and at least some of the cops entrusted with this will misuse it. Regularly. Perhaps often.
Another problem is, there's a real "us vs. them" mentality among cops, so even if one cop finds out another cop is, say, digging around in his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend's records, it's unlikely anything will be done about it. Cops don't "rat" each other out, ok? They just don't. Do you really think a bunch of good old boys are going to keep an eye on each other? What'll really happen is, "Joe won't snitch on Bob for fucking with the guy who 'stole' Bob's girl, if Bob doesn't snitch on Joe for checking up on the hot babe who lives in his building". And, Joe and Bob will keep on misusing their power, as has happened throughout history.
For that reason, I'm against this utterly.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Asher has also donated services to the FBI, the Secret Service and other agencies. And authorities credit Seisint with helping to turn up links among the hijackers who slammed planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and to some of their associates.
1) If this statement is indeed true, then my first question is "Were the links apparent before, or after the terrorist attacks".
a) If the answer is "before", then why didn't these paragons of virtue say something and save ~3000 lives?
b) If the answer is "after", then the system is worthless as an intelligence tool. The bits and pieces of any conspiracy are always out in the public before an incident occurs. The value of intelligence analysis is the ability to merge these apparently unrelated pieces of information to reach a conclusion. If their system is only capable of making a link after an event, then Florida residents better keep an eye on their wallets.
Here, I'll do the same thing without their database: 'The Japanese were responsible for
bombing Pearl Harbor.'
Pretty neat, huh?
2) Who goes to jail if the system is used for political surveillance?
a) Considering the system can be abused (a point that even supporters admit is possible), who will be responsible for rouge elements within a state government that use the system to collect information on political activists who disagree with a sitting administration?
b) Does anyone really believe that Nixon DIDN'T use the IRS and FBI to spy on anti-war activists during Viet Nam?
This system, however worthy it is in stopping potential violent acts, is too dangerous a tool to be placed in the hands of politicians.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Cops are always honest and unbribe-able (sp?). Besides the US government has never abused any of its powers.
And the government needs to know your credit rating. Because if you are poor you are a criminal in America today. If you are poor you might have motivation to commit a crime, rich people don't commit crimes because they're already rich.
Vote Quimby!
The problem is the commercial databases that are for sale. I'm more concerned about getting my info off these databases. I want my privacy, actually I demand my privacy.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I've done lots of privacy work, especially concerning driver's license privacy.
About a year and a half ago, a well known local school board member (known for being very troublesome to other school board members, but extremely well respected and liked by the voters in his community) had an article printed about him in the newspaper saying that he had two driver's licenses.
The question was, how did they find out he had two licenses, since license data is protected by both state and national law. Unless the DMV actually had decided to take action against him (which they had not) someone with access to the database must have called up the paper.
So I called him up, and he said a few days before the article came out, he and his daughter were pulled over. His daughter was driving, but they were in a rented car, so the officer wanted to see his license, because he rented the car. The officer recognized who he was, talked about their military records, and let them on their way. So the hypothesis was that this officer then scanned through the computer, and found the two licenses, and called up the newspaper--which is where the violation of law occurred.
(With regard to the two licenses, the person claimed that it was an error on the part of the DMV. The two records had two different SSNs.)
Anyway, so I did the obvious. Based on freedom of information act, we asked the DMV and the state highway patrol (who runs the computer that the cops use in this state) to give us the data on who accessed the license records and when (a simple record request.)
The DMV cooperated immediately...and nothing of consequence there...they checked his license(s) records when the local newspaper called, to confirm whether or not he did have two licenses (an act which may have violated DPPA (driver's privacy protection act) but that hasn't been determined yet.)
The state highway patrol said that they didn't have to give up their records. Well, I checked through everything I could, but I couldn't find a single place which gave them that authority (though they claimed it.) They said they would perform an internal investigation, and give us the results of that investigation, but would redact the information concerning whom actually looked at his license(s) records.
The story ends there, more or less. The school board member decided that this issue wasn't worth pursuing, given time and resources. And he felt that he already caused enough trouble.
(Actually the story ends this way...two agents of the DMV came to his house and told him that if he gives up the two licenses, they will just reissue him one license at the DMV and that will be that. I don't need to tell you that this is pretty irregular behavior by the DMV (they didn't even charge him) but even with all the time I spend researching the DMV, I can't figure out why they did it.)
I guess the point is, the ability to get auditing records of such a database is vital for making sure it's being used correctly. When a state agency refuses to give up auditing records on yourself, it implies that a need for greater oversight on how they operate.
(My signature talks about my current driver's license privacy project in New Jersey...I wanted yall to know that it didn't happen in NJ, but in Ohio.)
It's the Democrats who come up with most of the IP legislation. Clinton was "tough on crime" and promised to double the police force. He also signed the CDA, COPA, CIPA, DMCA, and Digital Millenium act. Remember the Clipper chip?
The only difference is in what they say. I care more about what they do.
Well, at least a drug-smuggling-pilot-turned-snitch is a somewhat better person to have in charge of all of our personal information than Disgraced Iran-Contra Felon John Poindexter (as El Reg tends to call him... or something similar).
Anyone who can remember back to the year 2000 knows that the State of Florida can certainly be trusted to handle millions of documents in an appropriate fashion.
My state's IT people are too incompetent and/or mismanaged to get a single decent IT project completed. I'd say 90% of IT and software design is a total waste in state gov't.
Even if they could get their act together, the house and senate can't sustain funding for them even when there's plenty of money, much less when they are Billions in the red.
Using outside firms, known for cashing in on lucrative cushy government contracts while producing virtually nothing, only compounds the problem.
What makes you think they can make this work?
What will result is a system that will track law abiding people while clever "grifters" and "criminals" short circuit the system, or worse, use the system as a means to further their agenda.
When an incompetent but well-intentioned government spies on their own, they end up exposing to danger the very people they are sworn to protect.
In the U.S., not much talent gravitates to the government sector when fortunes can be made elsewhere.
American Secret Service Reconnaissance Extraction And Misuse
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
They will get it wrong, it's a certainty. I work for the State of Florida and deal with FDLE every day, and like any other cops they're not above harassment, vendettas, and abuse of power. More dangerously, some of the techs and investigators are just not all that bright. The law enforcement databases that are being pulled together are chock full of erroneous information. The clerks who enter the data don't make a living wage and there's a high turnover, so the quality of data entry is very low. Those who work in law enforcement are aware of this, but it's very hard to challenge something once it's in there, and they like it that way. If you know someone it helps.
What's most fascinating to me is the bit about "commercially available databases" being included as well. Does this include your credit card receipts? How about the data collected by your supermarket discount card?
PS for the Non-Americans out there . . . I know the development of the culture of surveillance might be disturbing to you, but all we want is to be on reality TV. The Bush administration understands this deep-seated human need and is doing all they can to get us all on camera.
I agree with you in principle, but I think we need alot more than just laws to make sure that abuse is prevented. After all, its the very poeple charged with enforcing the laws that we are in danger from. What we need is either some sort of watchdog orginization charged specifically with preventing abuses of this power, or (better yet) some sort of mutual transparency that lets *the general public* monitor how the police use this power.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Having had their hands slapped on that one, they instead resort to the lovely "Matrix" acronym -- perhaps (you think?) thinking that it'd be catchy with all those kids who saw the movie... Note to spooks: to the kids who saw the movie, this acronym will not seem cool, it'll just seem unbelievably scary. Criminy.
Best stick to "Patriot" something-or-other. That's always good. Red white and blue for the logo this time... With the people in the image depicted in nifty flight suits. Ah, soothes the worry.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
M.A.T.R.I.X. ('Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange'). where is the fucking R?
I'm as anti TIA call up pictures of my mom on a whim as anyone. But I'm pro-technology. In other discussions (p2p, for example) I often argue that the luddites should get out of the way. Technology is progress! If you're not with us, then you are a candlemaker in the age of electricity. Too bad for you.
/. about how people how post statements to /. are idiots. Those people truly are. But come on. I don't think the issue or answers here are at all obvious. They are worthy of deep thoughtful discussion. So screw on your thinking caps, and the next time this topic comes up (probably within the next 24 hours) try to add some depth to the conversation. This is a great forum in which to do so. Slashdot is read by millions. Take advantage. Get some good ideas out there. God knows we need them.
I think the same argument applies here. Like it or not, using databases to correlate huge repositories of information is just not that difficult. It's going to happen. How can it be stopped?
Are there any constitutional provisions protecting us from such technology? Not that I know of. Quite frankly, the constitution is rather ambiguous on the subject of your privacy. Witness the recent bruhaha vis-a-vis sodomy in Texas for example. In that case the Supreme court came down on the side of privacy. How the supremes feel about your medical records, your social security number, your photograph, your fingerprints, your school record, your criminal record, your address, etc. has yet to be determined. It's not so clear that anything in the US constitution protects you from the potential abuses inherent to correlating all that information. The constitution proper primarily concerns itself with what the goverment can do. The Bill of Rights primarily concerns itself with what the government cannot do. As far as I know, there's nothing in there that says the government can't make a database. Funny, it probably never occured to them.
On the other hand, the constitution doesn't protect you from the abuses inherent to giving everyone ready access to gasoline, either. Are you afraid of gasoline?
So here's an idea. If the government is going to create vast databases of information about its citizens - fine. But make those databases public. The problem is one of power. If only a few people have access, they have too much power. Give *everyone* access. It's not o.k for John Poindexter to look up pictures of my mom on a whim. But it's o.k. if anyone in the world can do so.
The truth is the truth. Who's afraid of the truth? The biggest lotto winner who gave millions to churches just had hundreds of thousands of dollars recovered behind the dumpster of the brothel he was visiting. That's the truth. You can read it in the papers. Throw open the bathroom doors! What you do with yourself is the Truth! Let it show, baby!
Yeah, whatever. I want to poop in private. I believe its my right to do so. I want to fuck in private too. And talk to my doctor about my vascectomy in private. I want my school records to remain private. I want my criminal record, meager as it may be, to remain private also. But I want to know if my neighbor is a child molester.
My main point is - this is goddamn complicated issue. And I'm getting pretty sick of the typical slashdot rhetoric. I'm not one to post statements to
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!