National "Dragnet" Connecting at State, Local Level

Squirtle tips us to a Washington Post story about the progress and expansion of N-DEx - the National Data Exchange. Developed by Raytheon for a mere $85 million, N-DEx is hailed as a unified intelligence sharing system, which will allow agencies to share and analyze data from all levels of law enforcement. From the Post: "Three decades ago, Congress imposed limits on domestic intelligence activity after revelations that the FBI, Army, local police and others had misused their authority for years to build troves of personal dossiers and monitor political activists and other law-abiding Americans. Since those reforms, police and federal authorities have observed a wall between law enforcement information-gathering, relating to crimes and prosecutions, and more open-ended intelligence that relates to national security and counterterrorism. That wall is fast eroding following the passage of laws expanding surveillance authorities, the push for information-sharing networks, and the expectation that local and state police will play larger roles as national security sentinels."

Comments

First thought.

[techno-vampire]

When I saw the title, my first thought was that the article was about the old Dragnet TV show and Sgt. Joe Friday. I must admit that I was very disappointed to find out I was wrong.

A helpful guideline:

[TubeSteak]

I'm going to quote an old post from the "DMCA Abuse Widespread" article:

Whenever a controversial law is proposed, and its supporters, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, use a phrase along the lines of 'Perhaps in theory, but the law would never be applied in that way' - they're lying . They intend to use the law that way as early and as often as possible.

Re:A helpful guideline:

[ILuvRamen]

that's not how it works. Rarely does some evil poltiical overlord try and make some BS law as a false front to do something shady. That's just in the movies. What usually happens is the person has good intentions and then someone later abuses it. That or someone hacks their system and steals all the information. Rarely do we ever see a "the government collected embarrassing info on me and put it on their myspace page for the world to see" like all the paranoid people fear, but boy do we hear the stories about way overly detailed and unnecessary databases getting hacked and all the data stolen!

Re:A helpful guideline:

[poetmatt]

Really? What part of the PRO IP act as a recent example? Or how about this "no swear word" ordinance in a California town? You'd call good intentions directly stifling the first amendment? You don't think this was the goal straight from the start, that now it has to be challenged to be proven wrong?

wait for injustice

[ndnspongebob]

Now that the all the agencies are against the citizens, who will protect us from the government? and when will they realize they have gone too far? for sure, injustice will come before change

Re:That's cool

[siddesu]

And if you're unlucky, you may for a few years see fast crackdowns on all challengers of the political establishment for various minor and unimportant crimes (which will later conveniently preclude them from running for public office), until the day you stop seeing a lot of unapproved challengers to the political establishment.

Then one day you may be asked to cooperate for an investigation of your neghbour, or to close down your blog, or something, and when you decline, someone may produce your file and say "see, there are these records about you here, your case hasn't quite made it to court but it will if you don't help, and since there's three of them, by statute no. 22, you get a very long sentence". So, you'll have the choice to cooperate or else. For many people that may be enough pressure.

Of course, I don't think that scenario is particularly likely in the US. Still, it seems the potential of harm from a comprehensive dossier the government has on people is enough to not let them have it, or at least have it cheaply.

It may be cliche, but...

[hyades1]

... if the government is allowed to get away with this, the terrorists have won.

It's extremely difficult to take over a country where everything is decentralized and/or chaotic. You might inflict damage on one spot, but all the others just keep cooking along. US problems in Iraq are a good example of this.

Conversely, a society where every detail of every citizen's life is available in a centralized database (which is conveniently located in the same place as a strong central government) virtually begs to be taken over. You have only to take over the brain, and the rest of the body politic just keeps obliviously going about its business. The only difference is that there's a new boss raking in the profits.

And to all those jackasses who like to say, "If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of", I'd simply ask in return, "Are you really stupid enough to believe the information a government collects on you is always accurate?"

These dipshits can't locate 10 million illegal aliens, and they found out the Berlin Wall was coming down on the evening news. But you trust them to notice you're not the same guy as the one with a similar name and SIN who likes to rob banks half way across the country?

If somebody doesn't put some reins on these bastards right quick, we're going to find out there's worse things than losing a city or two to terrorist action.

Re:That's cool

[rock_climbing_guy]

Well, there are allegations that top government officials have been illegally using the secret dossiers that it already has.

The tree of liberty

[leereyno]

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The only thing worse than criminals are rogue agents of the state, acting under color of authority, to undermine the rights of their fellow citizens.

Thugs and goons are bad enough, but they're 10 times worse when given a badge.

A good friend of mine once said: Most cops are NOT pigs, but an awful lot of pigs pursue a career in law enforcement. The older I get, the more I understand just how right he was.

At the end of the day, the only thing that stands between us and the would-be tyrants of the world is our willingness to oppose them, with deadly force if need be. Liberty and power are two sides of the same coin, and in the real world political power comes from the barrel of a gun.

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.

Heh...

[Oxy the moron]

I've actually worked (albeit very briefly) on Indiana's part of this system, iDex. At my previous job, I worked on a police department records management system, and we had to write code to "plug in" to this National database. The odd thing about this is that we had to write our software to work in 4 different states (IL, IN, NY, SC) and each state (of course) does their data collection differently. So I'm not sure the database will be entirely useful, as some states will contribute one thing to one data field and some states will contribute something entirely different.

However, the scary part is, even if you call in to *report* a crime, your name goes into the system. I know this because our software kept track of every individual (criminal or otherwise) that was entered into it, and, to my knowledge, all data from the system was passed on to the iDex application.