The MATRIX Data Mining System

Three years later, Asher's brainchild has blossomed into the MATRIX—the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, a network of state databases subsidized by the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. While Seisint provides its databases, technology, and facilities for the project, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and a nonprofit research institute in Florida manage the day-to-day oper-ations. Law enforcement agencies in four other states—Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—are enrolled in the project, which allows them to conduct searches for criminal investigations in return for putting their own databases into MATRIX.
The American Civil Liberties Union, however, wants to eliminate federal funding for MATRIX. "They are searching through disconnected records, which may not be accurate, looking for patterns and drawing conclusions about people," says Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "One conclusion they drew is that there are 120,000 suspected terrorists in the United States. If there are 120,000 terrorists in America, then we are in much deeper trouble than anyone ever imagined."