Utah law enforcement officials defend MATRIX

Utah law enforcement officials want to somehow improve their ability to investigate crime and analyze suspects, whether that means being a part of MATRIX or participating in some other program.

And they defend the much-maligned super-computer database.

"MATRIX was a great tool," said Jeff Peterson of the Utah Department of Public Safety, was one of the primary users of MATRIX who "almost cried" when Gov. Olene Walker pulled the state out. "In law enforcement, analytical work has always been done. This was just a tool that saved us time and made us more accurate."

Lost in the ongoing national criticism of the program is the immense benefit that MATRIX provides law enforcement, especially when investigating serious crimes, such as kidnapping and corporate fraud, he said.

During a Tuesday meeting of the MATRIX Review Committee, Peterson and other DPS representatives urged state officials to reconsider the decision to leave the program, and to consider the benefits of the technology.

MATRIX, known formally as the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, combined confidential information from local and state agencies, such as criminal backgrounds, motor vehicle registrations and driver's license records, with hundreds of publicly available data-bases to create a super database of billions of records that can be search in minutes.

The publicly available information is collected by Florida-based Seisint Inc., and includes addresses and phone numbers from phone directories, real estate information, corporate filings and civil court filings.

While that information is already available to law enforcement, making it easily accessible could also open the door to profiling by investigators and lead to the tracking of people who have committed no crimes, said Steve Erickson, director of the government watchdog group Citizens Education Committee. Even if the state were to move ahead with MATRIX or look for a "MATRIX II," he cautioned the committee to consider all of the implications and to involve public citizens with the program's supervision.

"There's a general lack of oversight with these programs," he said. "When there isn't some transparency, you run into the problems and privacy concerns that we all have."

The committee did not talk much about the cost of the program. It is estimated it would cost Utah taxpayers about $1.7 million a year to stay in the program, which is now funded under federal grants from the Department of Homeland Security.