Wisconsin withdrew Tuesday from a system giving law enforcement access to a large, organized database of personal information called the Matrix that some fear would trod on privacy rights, according to Brian Rieselman, spokesperson for the attorney general's office.
\Because of the privacy concerns, we've suspended all involvement,"" he said.
Since the state signed up Feb. 11, it has not accessed the database or shared its own data, and it will now conduct a full review of the program, he said.
Wisconsin is not alone in reconsidering the Matrix, or Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. Of the 13 states that originally signed up, six remain. Concerns center on how detailed a picture it could paint of a person's life and activities.
Bill Shrewsburg, a spokesperson for the Florida-based company Seisint, which administers the database, said it was nothing law enforcement does not already have.
""We don't create dossiers on people,"" he said. ""There are no intelligence files regarding individuals.""
The goal, Shrewsburg said, was not to compile information on people from sources normally unavailable to law enforcement, but to put it all in one place and speed up access.
According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, however, the system ""combs through the millions of files in a search for 'anomalies' that may be indicative of terrorist or other criminal activity.""
The report compared the program to Total Information Awareness, a Pentagon data-mining program Congress scrapped.
Shrewsburg said the system would only be used on open criminal investigations, and records made publicly available after a case closes would be kept of all data requests.
Seisint is a subcontractor for the Florida Police Department, who run the Matrix. Shrewsburg said the database was a combination of commercially available data and proprietary law-enforcement information, which only police and specific members of Seisint staff with security clearance could access.
Another ACLU report called the program worrisome because state programs would not draw as much opposition as national programs.
""We had a group of legislators from different parts of the country ... to examine what Matrix was all about, and they walked away from there understanding that this in fact is not what the ACLU and some of the privacy advocates are saying it is,"" Shrewsburg said.
