Utahn fears MATRIX 'shared' personal data

That was until June 2002 when Adams first registered the car at Motor Vehicles, a division of the Utah Tax Commission. There was no correspondence addressed to the family trust of any kind until December 2003 when the American Express solicitations first began arriving.

Jodi Monaco, spokeswoman for the Tax Commission, insisted vehicle registration information remains confidential, although the Utah Department of Public Safety and other law enforcement agencies have access to it.

"We are in full compliance with the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act," she said. "We don't share with anyone not authorized."

Public Safety Commissioner Robert Flowers did not return Deseret Morning News calls, but a public information officer said it was doubtful that American Express could have gotten its hands on confidential information intended only for law enforcement. And there are state and federal privacy laws to ensure that it does not happen, she added.

"If there has been a violation of (state or federal privacy) law, we need to know," said DPS spokeswoman Tammy Palmer. "If what he (Adams) says is true, this absolutely has to be tracked down."

And if the evidence leads to MATRIX? "It will be shut down. Permanently," she said.

Adams thinks the smoking gun could be found at Seisint Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla., company, that, according to its Internet site, "provides information products that allow organizations to quickly and easily extract valuable knowledge from huge amounts of data."

The company claims to have tens of billions of data records on file and the technology to link them together for a variety of public and private needs.

The Florida Department of Public Safety has contracted with Seisint to coordinate MATRIX, a multi-state law enforcement database instigated by the Department of Homeland Security that sifts public and confidential databases to help thwart crime.

Utah was among the pilot states participating in the program, but on Thursday, Gov. Olene Walker pulled the plug on the state's involvement until privacy concerns can be addressed.

The state began downloading its confidential data files — criminal histories, title and vehicle registrations, driver's license records and Department of Corrections data — in December, or about the same time Adams began receiving solicitations from American Express.

Cummings said there is no way that confidential databases intended only for law enforcement somehow got mixed up with commercial databases purchased by companies such as American Express. All of the confidential information is housed in a "controlled environment," he said, and only users involved in active criminal investigations have access.

Susan Korchak, an American Express spokeswoman, said the company has no record of working with Seisint, nor does it use confidential databases.