In other words, it could do everything promised by the controversial MATRIX, the Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, and maybe even more since it would mandate that federal agencies "coordinate, communicate and collaborate."

Former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt signed the state up for MATRIX, but he never told lawmakers or the public exactly what MATRIX was, or of its potential to monitor the lives of ordinary citizens. Walker later suspended the state's participation, saying she was not satisfied with safeguards to ensure that private information was not abused.

Utah was one of 13 states to sign onto the program, funded by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security through a Florida foundation run by Doug Bodrero, the former director of the Utah Department of Public Safety. Eight states have since dropped out, some citing financial concerns, others worries over potential abuses of the database that is estimated at 20 billion records.

MATRIX is a cousin to the Total Information Awareness, a federal database that Congress unplugged after questions arose about its effectiveness and intrusive nature.

With lawmakers debating long and hard about other national security issues, primarily the implementation of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, the new national information-sharing network has generated little comment.

The American Civil Liberties Union's Washington, D.C., was unaware of any MATRIX connection in the Intelligence Act and referred calls to its New York office, which has taken the lead in opposing MATRIX. Officials in the New York office were not available for comment Tuesday.

The bill now before Congress contains a complex series of rules for how the information can be used and who can use it, and it would create an electronic audit trail — all with the idea of reducing the potential the data could be abused.

And Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy and Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold, both Democrats, recently attached language to a Senate appropriations bill that would require all federal agencies using "data-mining" technologies to inform Congress of those efforts (the rider must still be approved by the House).

"Ironically, at the same time that the administration has been making it harder and harder for the public to learn what government agencies are up to, the government and its private sector partners have been quietly building more and more databases to learn and store more information about the American people," Leahy said. "The American people deserve to know what kind of information is gathered about them and how federal agencies intend to store and use it."

Those assurances are of little comfort to privacy advocates like Ruzicka, who believe the government is already using computer data to monitor its citizens.

"They are already doing it," she said. "It should never happen, but it is."

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com