Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX)

The Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or MATRIX, program was an attempt by state government to use data mining to fight crime and terrorism on the national and local levels following the attacks of September 11, 2001. MATRIX was a consortium of law enforcement and state agencies that joined law enforcement records with other government and private-sector databases in an attempt to find patterns, relationships, and links among people. The MATRIX project was administered by the Institute for Intergovernmental Research, funded under the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Domestic Preparedness ($8 million) and the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance ($4 million), and managed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The MATRIX program utilized the private data aggregation company Seisint Inc. and its locate-and-research tool called Accurint. The system digitally identified and tagged over 3.9 billion public records containing information and data on almost everyone within the United States. The program applied Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution (FACTS), which gave law enforcement the ability to query available public records even with incomplete information like partial license plate numbers or incomplete names. This massive data reservoir was then analyzed and scored to generate leads and expedite investigations. The resulting information was then shared with law enforcement.
The computer-generated scores created by the MATRIX program were referred to as a terrorism quotient or a high factor score for terrorism. Their purpose was to profile individuals to prevent terrorist attacks. The accuracy and potential impact of MATRIX’s identification system was significant. The program claimed to have successfully identified five of the 9/11 hijackers and to have assisted the independent agency National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in tracking missing and abducted children.
Immediately after 9/11, the project was encouraged by the mandates set forth in the 2002 Attorney General’s Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering Enterprise, and Terrorism Enterprise Investigations. The guidelines empowered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to carry out general topical research, including conducting online searches and assessing online sites and forums, to the same extent as the general public as long as the research was relevant to the purpose of facilitating or supporting the discharge of investigative responsibilities. Initially, 16 states joined the project. State participation diminished when it was learned that state-owned data had to be transferred to private MATRIX system administrators, which violated state privacy laws. Eventually the system was altered so that the information was stored in a remote, state-maintained and secured database as opposed to the MATRIX central data repository.
The MATRIX program was heavily criticized. Challenges were made to the quality of the data and the difficulty for individuals to correct faulty data. Critics complained of vast amounts of easily accessed, potentially private information. Other concerns included the characteristics used to profile individuals and the possibility that the government could, with the assistance of analytical software, conduct electronic searches on people whom they had no reason to suspect of criminal or illegal behavior. MATRIX supporters believed that the program served as an investigative tool with sufficient regulatory control to guard against indiscriminate surveillance on individuals or to engage in inappropriate or unauthorized use. In 2003, however, the program was terminated and condemned as a state-level version of the discredited federal-level “Total Information Awareness” project, which queried both public and private records, including mailing lists and credit histories.