How do you know if your state’s governor sucks?

By | February 2, 2004

One sure indicator is if your state’s governor serruptitiously destorys privacy for every citizen in the state. This story is scary, to say the least:

“It sounds like a sci-fi thriller: a super computer program that gathers dossiers on every single man, woman and child – everything from birth and marriage and divorce history to hunting licenses and car license plates. Even every address you have lived at down to the color of your hair.

“It sounds surreal, but former Gov. Mike Leavitt signed Utah’s 2.4 million residents up for a pilot program – ironically called MATRIX – that does just that. And he never bothered to reveal details of the program to Utah citizens or to state lawmakers”

MATRIX (Multistate Anti-TerroRism Information eXchange) combines private and public government databases. It effectively creates a detailed dossier on a person, containing information such as Social Security Numbers and birth dates (as well as the information listed above). All of this information is stored in a database at Seisint Inc in Florida. Governor Leavitt basically Seisint Inc to create a dossier on every Utah citizen.

So much for peronsal privacy. So much for keeping an eye on government. Needless to say, citizens and lawmakers in Utah are not very happy about this situation.

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