Utah unplugs its MATRIX link

MATRIX was initiated by the Department of Homeland Security after the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a means for law enforcement officers around the nation to communicate faster and more effectively (only law officers have access to MATRIX). All of the information in MATRIX was accessible to law enforcement officers before, "but this lets us do it faster," Flowers said.

Flowers worked with Leavitt, who was on President Bush's homeland security task force, to initiate Utah's involvement in the pilot program, along with 13 other states. Many of those states have since dropped out of the program because of financial and privacy concerns.

"It was approved by Gov. Leavitt with my support," he said.

Flowers called it a good program with good crime-fighting potential. But he also said "the public needs to be made comfortable" with it. The public's potential discomfort with the program was "an issue since the inception of this," he added.

As of 2 p.m. Thursday, Walker ordered the state to stop its participation until "we can fully understand it and get additional information and get local oversight."

Leavitt apparently signed Utah up for the MATRIX project last June, and Walker said the state began the program in mid-December. Leavitt could not be reached for comment Thursday, but his former spokeswoman, Natalie Gochnour, who now works with Leavitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, said she indicated to her that MATRIX was a "planning effort," and referred all calls about it to Verdi White, the head of Utah's homeland security effort.

That might not be good enough for lawmakers who want answers as to why Leavitt kept it a secret from them. And lawmakers may want to know if it really works.

Rep. Morgan Philpot, R-Sandy, opened two bill files Thursday, the last day to introduce legislation in the 2004 Legislature. "If we need a legislative response to MATRIX, we need to do something now," he said.

A noted conservative, Philpot said he's troubled by what state government may be doing, and why other states opted out of the MATRIX pilot program but Utah didn't.

"If we have data collection (on citizens) without legislators or citizens knowing about it . . . well, that's wrong. We need to know why this happened and a valid reason for it," said Philpot.

He opened a resolution file, a way to ask Walker and other state executives for answers if need be. He also opened a bill file, in case there should be a law. "Together, I'm calling them MATRIX unplugged," he joked, a play on the titles of a recent series of sci-fi futuristic thrillers with evil super computers that take over the earth.

He then said there are serious questions to be answered: "Should we end MATRIX in Utah? What information did we give it? And more importantly, can we get any or all of it back and have the federal data banks purged?"