nusratt's Journal: MATRIX database "accomodates" privacy concerns

[story submitted to slashdot editors 2004-07-22 21:05 UTC and AGAIN at 2004-07-24 06:25 UTC] Associated Press: The MATRIX program was feeding state vehicle and law-enforcement records into commercial databases owned by Seisint, covering half the U.S. population. But privacy advocates countered by availing themselves of state laws preventing transfer of such data to non-governmental entities. So the program will now 'address' privacy fears by having each state maintain its own records -- and software will search across all of the states' databases successively, from any requestor's location, in addition to the commercial databases. But, the ACLU points out, 'Decentralized data which is just as easily accessed as centralized data creates the same privacy problems.' Furthermore, Seisint soon will be owned, controlled, and accessible by the European owners of LexisNexis.