I have a better idea where that no-fly list came from
Database Firm Listed 120,000 'Likely Terrorists'
Thu May 20, 2004 05:57 PM ET
By Jane Sutton
MIAMI (Reuters) - The company that runs the multistate MATRIX law enforcement database gave the U.S. government a list of 120,000 people who scored high on a computer profile it said was designed to identify likely terrorists, a civil liberties group said on Thursday.
The Florida company that created the list, Seisint Inc., said in government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union that the "High Terrorism Factor" list had led to scores of arrests.
Seisint created the list shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, apparently acting on its own, the ACLU said.
The ACLU has asked for a government investigation to determine who had access to the list of 120,000 people and how the information was used. It called the data-mining program a chilling invasion of privacy that allows police to investigate millions of law-abiding citizens without their knowledge.
"People on that list ought to be concerned," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's privacy and technology program. "Just being associated with a terrorist list is going to make people's lives miserable."
Law enforcement officials involved with the program have said the terrorist quotient was abandoned when MATRIX was developed. But the ACLU said the documents it received through freedom of information requests contained nothing to indicate that, and that the terrorist profiling feature was "a sort of central selling point of the program."
