By Cliff Montgomery – May 28th, 2014The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) runs a national data system which earlier this year contained around 200 million records on approximately two billion entities, a little-known federal report has revealed.The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division runs an information-gathering system called the Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx).Sypherlink, the private contractor which implements the N-DEx system across the U.S., has explained that the data system is set up to detect “relationships between people, vehicle/property, location, and/or crime characteristics.”An unclassified CJIS presentation which took place in February 2014 stated that the data system was “created with the security and privacy of information in mind,” yet the presentation added that it was left to those running the “agencies to determine what data they will share, with whom, and at what level.”“Data sharing rules may be applied as broad as an agency level or as specific as an individual record,” the presentation added. The February presentation is of special interest, as it revealed detailed data on both local and state information contributors – and thus included a full account of the data records submitted by each state. At least 34 U.S. states provide information to the data system, according to the February N-DEx presentation. It should surprise no one that Texas has submitted almost three times more data than any other participating state it provides the FBI system with over 68 million records. Arkansas, Virginia, California and Tennessee also have done their part: each of those states has provided over 10 million records to the N-DEx system. Numerous federal agencies appear to have provided the FBI data system with an additional 23 million records. The sheer volume of these records is an important matter. A federal privacy impact assessment of the N-DEx system released some years ago – January 2007, to be exact – declared that “during initial deployment,” officials “estimated that the number of records in the N-DEx may be approximately 30-35 million records.” But N-DEx officials admitted to Police Chief Magazine that by November 2012, the FBI data system had ballooned to “more than 145 million records” and “one billion searchable entities.” It was not immediately clear from the February N-DEx presentation just how the massive growth and increasing reach of the FBI data system has effected the right to privacy in America. What is clear is that the FBI refers to the information exchange as “a mechanism for sharing, searching, linking, and analyzing information across jurisdictional boundaries.” This system includes “incident and case reports, booking and incarceration data, and parole/probation information.”
How Necessary Laws Are Killed These Days
Lawmakers generally only fight to protect the things they care about – and all too often, that just doesn’t include the lives of most of their constituents.
