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For Immediate Release: March 11th, 2004 Contact: Contact: Jordan Isenstadt (c) 516.991.3842 (w) 212.490.9535 (f) 212.490.2151 ***PRESS
RELEASE*** State
Senator Liz Krueger & New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Applaud
Decision by New York State Police to Withdraw from National
“Data Mining” Pilot Project MATRIX Program Modeled after Pentagon’s Total
Information Awareness Project New York, NY – State Senator Liz Krueger
(D-Manhattan) and the NYCLU praised the decision of the New York State Police
to pull out of the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX)
pilot project today. “New York has
acted responsibly by withdrawing from the invasive and costly MATRIX
program,” said Senator Krueger. Robert Perry, the
NYCLU’s Legislative Director commented that “MATRIX has little or nothing to
do with tracking terrorism; it is rather a massive and misguided citizen
profiling scheme, one that would make suspects out of innocent people.” In June 2002, 15 states expressed interest in
participating in a pilot project of the MATRIX. The program is designed to merge personal data, such as social
security numbers, arrest records and marriage records with information from
commercial databases, such as credit reports, employment history and business
transaction history. Funding was
provided by the Justice Department ($4 million) and the Department of
Homeland Security ($8 million). Presently, only 5 states continue to participate in the
database. Furthermore, advocacy
groups and think tanks from all over the political spectrum oppose the
MATRIX, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), American
Conservative Union and the Cato Institute. “The MATRIX is remarkably similar in intent to the
Pentagon’s botched Total Information Awareness project,” stated Senator
Krueger. “Both projects are misguided
attempts to protect citizens from terrorism and criminal activity. The reality is that neither program will
solve these problems and that they would waste massive amounts of money in
the final analysis. It is clear that
the MATRIX is merely an attempt to shift the goals of the flawed Total
Information Awareness project to the states.” The NYCLU’s
Executive Director, In a letter dated March 9, 2004, to the Chairman of the
MATRIX at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, NY State Police
Assistant Deputy Superintendent Steven Cumoletti wrote, “Unfortunately,
instead of increasing the number of participating states over time to improve
the potential benefits of the pilot, to date nearly two-thirds of the initial
states have opted out of the project.
The uncertainty of continued funding and the valid concerns about the
feasibility of expanding the project in its current physical data warehouse
design have been the most crucial reasons provided for withdrawing.” The MATRIX is administered by a Florida-based company
called Seisint. The MATRIX is a
database that was initially created in tandem with Florida law enforcement
officials with the purpose of generating dossiers based on a wide array of
personal information to hunt for patterns indicative of terrorist or criminal
activity. This process is known as
“data-mining” and was fashioned after the TIA project that Congress shut down
in 2003. “Data-mining is a powerful
tool that has the potential to be harnessed in inappropriate ways,” stated
Senator Krueger. “It is inevitable
that countless innocent people will be targeted incorrectly, which is not
only an invasion of privacy, but a waste of police enforcement resources.” The founder of the MATRIX, Hank Asher has a “questionable
past”. It is alleged that in the
1980’s, Mr. Asher was a major drug smuggler.
In 1987, Asher became a State and Federal informant and was therefore
not indicted for his participation in a drug smuggling ring that brought over
$150 million worth of cocaine to the United States in a single year. In the 1990’s, Asher was instrumental in
developing the infamous software that was eventually used by the Florida
Department of Elections to wrongly purge the voter roles, disenfranchising
tens of thousand of voters. “I have been investigating the MATRIX program for months
and the more I learned the more disturbed I became,” remarked Senator
Krueger. “I have received hundreds of
letters from constituents who vehemently oppose the MATRIX. They have called for New York State to
withdraw and have described the project as ‘dangerous and invasive’. I am thrilled to report that New York has
terminated its participation.” -30- |
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