Creepy stuff in Florida:
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is putting together a computer network that would allow police to analyze government and commercial records on every Florida resident, and the agency is planning to share that information with police in at least a dozen other states.
Critics say the system – known as the Multistate Anti-Terrorist Information Exchange, or MATRIX – is an Orwellian technology that would allow police to assemble electronic dossiers on every Floridian, even those not suspected of crimes.
Here’s all of the story from the Gainsville Sun.
“Everybody makes this out to be more than it is,” said Clay Jester, MATRIX program director for the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, a nonprofit group that is helping FDLE find grant money to fund the system.
“Really, this isn’t very different from doing a Lexis-Nexis search on someone,” he said.
Right.
Amazing how privacy can drop off the radar when the state ‘wants’ something. Given the commercial clout that governments have when they deal with private organisation it is hard to expect private companies to resist the subtle but heavy pressure that governments can bring to bear.