NewStandard: Inside the Government’s Secret, Corporate-Run Mega-Database

In what civil liberties advocates call the most massive database surveillance program in US history, the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or Matrix, continues to compile billions of records on law-abiding citizens and receive federal funding, despite public outcry and suspicion.
A Florida-based company, Seisint, Inc., created the database shortly after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 by combining the company's own commercial databases with law enforcement records. 
Now law enforcement officials in participating states can comb the database to investigate ordinary crimes and terrorist threats. Matrix contains an unprecedented amount of information: current and past addresses and phone numbers, arrest records, real estate information, photographs of neighbors and business associates, car make, model and color, marriage and divorce records, voter registration records, hunting and fishing licenses, and more.
For example, a user could identify all brown-haired divorced male residents of Minneapolis who drive a red Toyota Camry and are registered to vote. The data can then be displayed in "social networking charts," showing connections between individuals, photo line-ups and "target maps," according to internal Seisint documents obtained by The New Standard after a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One of the documents boasts, "When enough insignificant data is gathered and analyzed…IT BECOMES SIGNIFICANT." (original emphasis)
Seisint sells database access to individual states. Sixteen states went through a pilot program, but after negative media coverage and concern from citizens, politicians, and even law enforcement officials, all but Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio have decided to stop using Matrix. 
The states that remain show no signs of bowing to public pressure. In Florida, law enforcement and government officials have become progressively more involved in the inner workings of Matrix. The supercomputers that hold the data are housed in Seisint's Boca Raton offices, guarded by Florida state police. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement acts as "Security Agent" for the system, even outside the state. 
The federal government also plays an active role. In January 2003, Florida Governor Jeb Bush met with Vice President Dick Cheney to demonstrate how the program could be used by law enforcement, and to request additional funding. The Department of Justice gave Seisint $4 million in grants in 2003. The Department of Homeland Security also provided $8 million to help run Matrix, and, last year, assumed "managerial oversight and control" of the database, according to the agreement between the DHS and Seisint. 
Civil liberties advocates claim that the Matrix is amassing records on ordinary people that, in a worse case scenario, could be used to track "suspicious" individuals, and to round up those likely of committing a crime -- before any crime has occurred. Matrix officials dismiss these claims, arguing that the database is just a faster way to locate criminals and terrorists. 
Bill Shrewsbury, vice president of Seisint, puts it simply. By using Matrix, he said, "You stop bad people quicker before they hurt someone else. It's that simple. There's no secrets here."
But the project remains under suspicion from civil liberties and privacy advocates who have expressed a number of serious concerns, including whether the database is used to conduct "data mining," a process by which data is searched to identify potential criminals or terrorists before any crime is committed. Also of concern is the company's secrecy about precisely what kind of data Matrix includes and how vulnerable the data is to being stolen, altered or misused by hackers. . . ."